Month: January 2019

A Panoply of Fading Jobs

Lamplighter, elevator operator, coal miner, buggy whip maker. These and other jobs have vanished or been sharply curtailed over the years. Things change – be it from technology advancing, an influx of cheap labor due to globalization, shifting immigration patterns or even just a change in consumer tastes.

While many industries and jobs seemed doomed to the dust bins of history, many of us remain stuck in denial when we should be looking forward to automation and robots taking the reins from humans.

Businesses come and go. A very small number tend to survive through the generations, and it’s unlikely even some of the biggest names in business today will make it to the next century. Things change, and economies evolve. There’s not much you can do about it. And when that happens, the jobs change, too.

Employment data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics related to job growth and decline helps to pinpoint a handful of jobs that are rapidly shrinking – and which might be almost completely gone within the next decade. Information from a report compiled by Lottoland aided in the process.

While these jobs probably always will exist in some fashion, their roles are quickly diminishing. They might not be fields you want to try to break into. Here’s take a quick look at some jobs on the endangered-species list.

Drivers. The world will always have drivers of some sort, and we’ll probably still be driving in 10 years. But the writing is on the wall, and a lot of resources are dedicated to handing over the wheel to automation. Self-driving cars are only a few years away, and when the switch happens, it’s not just our personal vehicles that will be autonomous. It’s Uber vehicles, long-haul 18-wheelers, public buses and more.

Farmers. Not all farmers will disappear within 10 years, but as we’ve seen over the past couple of generations, their role will diminish. At one time, most Americans were farmers. Now, there are only 2 million across the country. And it’s a shrinking field. Technology is making it easier for fewer people to produce more yield, and it’s likely that indoor farms and even lab-grown meats will start increasing in popularity. The new batch of farmers might resemble scientists and biologists more than anything.

Postal workers. The number of postal workers is dwindling for many reasons. Private companies, such as UPS and FedEx, are taking on some of the burden. But technology is the main culprit. As the mail system’s facilities become more automated and technologically capable, fewer people are going to be needed to run them. Postal workers have been pegged as America’s fastest-disappearing job.

Broadcasters. In an age when Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite have been replaced by Wolf Blitzer and Brian Williams, many people have already labeled broadcast journalism as dead. This is another industry that won’t disappear completely. But it is shrinking, meaning the few positions that are out there will become even more competitive. And generally, broadcast reporting is a hard job that pays relatively little and requires long hours.

Jewelers. The shrinking of the American jewelry industry is mostly due to globalization. There will always be local jewelers, but most jewelry manufacturing has moved overseas to contain costs. According to the statistics bureau, there aren’t even that many jewelers left in the U.S. – around 40,000 as of 2014. And that number is set to drop by 11% by 2024.

Fishermen. Professional fishermen face threats to their jobs on all fronts. The technology is clearly getting better, meaning fewer people are required to run an operation. But imports of seafood and farm-raised fish are becoming more popular and cheaper. There’s also the issue of overfishing to take into consideration and the fact that climate change is having a big effect on marine life and stocks of available fish.

Printers and publishers. Publishing and printing, at least in the old-fashioned sense, is an endangered industry. Technology has brought it to the digital realm, and we’ve seen the aftermath in declining newspaper readership and the rise of e-books. We’ll always publish books and periodicals, but the folks who have been trained in the old ways of producing them are likely to find themselves out of a job in the near future.

Cashiers. It’s clear to anyone who has been in a grocery store or big box chain recently that the days of the cashier are numbered. Cashiers are being replaced with self-checkout kiosks. Amazon is taking this a step further by experimenting with stores that don’t have checkout lines at all. It might take longer than a decade for the majority of cashiers to disappear, but they’re on the list.

Delivery. We’ve already looked at jobs such as drivers and postal workers. Both of those jobs aim at one primary function: delivering things. But we think that adding “delivery” as its own category is justified. Millions of people deliver things professionally – be it pizzas, newspapers or even people. And once again, the clock is ticking on these jobs, potentially leaving tens of millions out of work.

Travel agents. If you’re a fan of travel sites, such as Kayak, Priceline, or Hotwire, you’re slowly killing a long-established industry: travel agencies. Depending on your age, it’s entirely possible you never used a travel agent. At one time, these people were indispensable. These days, you can easily find a flight, hotel and car all from your phone – which is the main reason travel agents jobs are headed for extinction.

Dispatchers. We touched on drivers and delivery, but what about the people who tell those people where to go? They, too, are in trouble. We traditionally call these people dispatchers, and their jobs are in serious jeopardy. The main reason why is due to automation like many other imperiled jobs. Computers can route resources where they’re needed as well as (if not better than) any human.

Telemarketers. There was a time when you didn’t want to answer your phone because you thought it might be a telemarketer. They still exist, but fewer of them are flesh-and-blood humans. You might be familiar with robocalls. These days, these robot callers are replacing telemarketers. They are able to make more calls in less time, all while eliminating the need for employers to pay people to do it.

Social media professionals. Social media has wormed its way into every facet of our lives. Think of it this way: If it happened and you didn’t post it on Instagram, did it happen at all? With the advent of social media has come social media experts and managers. These jobs might exist in the future in some form. But social media isn’t going anywhere, and it might be akin to being a “television expert” or something similar in coming years. As the LottoLand report says, the skills associated with these jobs will become more commonplace than specialized.

Manufacturing workers. Manufacturing is declining at a rapid pace. It’s been happening for a while. This is one of the biggest issues facing the American economy. We simply don’t have or need armies of manufacturing workers like we used to. Factories have been automated, and many other manufacturing jobs have been relocated to countries where labor is cheaper. These jobs aren’t coming back, and they will, in all likelihood, continue to disappear.

Here Today, Gone Tomorrow

Today’s newest, fastest and best technology will soon look like a relic to future shoppers. With each new update, release and revision, the last version immediately feels primitive. Some products last just a few years, others endure for centuries, but one thing is certain – obsolescence is often inevitable. A look at our telephones and associated devices gives a good picture of what is happening.

Landlines. 1876-2017
Alexander Graham Bell revolutionized human communication when he made the first phone call to his assistant, Thomas Watson. The landline was born and it dominated for more than a century. The mobile era, however, signaled the end for the old-fashioned landline. In 2017, lawmakers in Illinois finally voted to allow AT&T to stop serving the state’s 1.2 million remaining landline customers.

Rotary Telephones. 1919-1975
Although Bell developed a primitive version in 1950, it took until 1975 for push button phones to make an impact. Tone-enabled features like call waiting and three-way calling signaled the beginning of the end for the slow, clumsy rotary dialing system, which had ruled since 1919.

Phone Booths. 1878-2011
Before phones were pocket-sized supercomputers, people had to stop if they wanted to make calls on the go. The places they stopped to make those calls were called phone booths. Once a familiar sight phone booths – like the landlines and phone books contained within – were dealt a mortal blow by the arrival of cell phones. Just 100,000 pay phones remain compared to 2 million in 1999.

Phone Books. 1878-2012
In 2007, Bill Gates predicted that “Yellow Page usage among people, say, below 50, will drop to zero – near zero – over the next five years.” More than a decade later, the 20th century relic refuses to die, with bound white and yellow paper directories of business and residential phone numbers still showing up on doorsteps across the country. But while they are still being produced, how often are they actually used in the era of smartphones and Google?

Answering Machines. 1971 – mid-2000s
In 1971, the world met the telephone answering machine with the debut of the PhoneMate Model 400. Now that you didn’t actually have to be home to know who called and what they wanted, the devices changed telephone communication forever. Then along came voicemail, which instantly made countertop machines with little tapes inside feel primitive. Then came cell phones. Then came smartphones. There are still some answering machines left in service, but they are the last of their kind.

1-900 Numbers. 1971-2012
The first known use of the 1-900 number was for the “Ask President Carter” talk radio broadcast, but the exchange became pop culture fodder when Eddie Murphy urged viewers to call one such number in defense of a lobster on “Saturday Night Live.” Soon 1-900 became the curse of parents everywhere when commercials featuring child-focused phone lines as well as adult chat lines became almost unavoidable. Thanks to strict blocking laws approved by the Supreme Court and an FTC ban on 1-900 commercials targeting children, the area code all but disappeared by 2002. Verizon dropped the very last one in 2012.

Dial-Up Modems (56K). 1996-2013
Do you want to use the phone or the computer? At the dawn of the internet age in the 1990s, this was the decision you would have faced if you wanted to get online. Then, 56k dial-up modems were associated with crushingly slow speeds, long startup times and frequent crashes. Then, as early as 2004, Newsweek reported on the “Death of Dial-Up,” which was on the decline thanks to the arrival of broadband. By 2013, just 3 percent of the country was still shackled to dial-up – a drop of 15 percent over the year prior.

Pagers. 1949-1998
The first pager was originally developed for a hospital in 1949. One-way pager use hit its peak in 1998, and then began a rapid downward spiral. The arrival of the two-way cell phone quickly rendered the technology – long a mainstay of drug dealers and doctors – a relic as the digital age drew near.

Fax Machines. 1843 – late 2000s
It’s hard to believe that fax machines have clung to the bottom rung of the office tech ladder for as long as they have. Although facsimile machines aren’t quite dead, they are certainly a dying breed, at least compared to the technology’s peak of popularity in 1997 when 3.6 million of the loud, bulky machines were sold. Faxing was perfected to near-modern standards in the early 1900s, but the technology was so expensive that it was out of reach for most businesses until the 1980s. Today, services like FaxZero, launched in 2006, allow anyone with an email address and an internet connection to send faxes for free, which doesn’t bode well for the future of the fax machine. U.S. sales of fax machines fell by more than half from $181 million in 2005 to $70 million in 2010.

The Times They Are A’Changing

Way back in 1964, Bob Dylan penned the lyrics to his song “The Times They Are A’Changing”. Little did he, or we, know just how much change was coming. Some products lasted just a few years, others endured for centuries, but one thing is certain – obsolescence is often inevitable.

Alarm Clocks. 725-2008
Prior to the year 725, no one was ever on time for anything. But that year in China, Yi Xing invented the first known alarm clock, and the descendants of his contraption have been startling slumberers out of dreams both good and bad ever since. It was actually the rise of the clock radio that spelled the beginning of the end for the standalone alarm clock, but in the end it was cell phones that rendered the single-function timed noisemaker a relic of a bygone era.

Encyclopedias. 1766-2010
In 2010, the Encyclopedia Britannica published its final print edition. It was a massive, 32-volume collection spanning 32,640 pages. It followed in the footsteps of the seven million similar sets purchased by academics, students and hobbyists throughout the company’s 244-year history. The encyclopedia met its demise in the form of the Internet, which offered knowledge at the click of a button.

Film. 1839-2018
In 1839, Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre shocked the world by freezing a moment in time when he snapped the world’s first photograph. Film photography would dominate for more than 150 years. Then in December 1975 an engineer at Eastman Kodak, Steve Sasson, invented the digital camera. The 1999 Kodak DC210 truly signaled the beginning of the digital camera revolution – and the beginning of the end for film. In May 2018, Canon announced it had finally sold its last film camera, eight years after it stopped making them – it took that long to deplete the unsold inventory.

Slide Projectors. 1849-2000s
Scrolling through photos now requires nothing more than a few flicks of the finger across the smooth glass of a smartphone screen. If you need to turn those shows into a presentation, you have your choice of apps that let anyone create slick and seamless slideshows. There was a time, however, when that ability required actual slides. And those slides had to be projected via massive, loud machines that ran hot and came with little remote controls that were often beyond the understanding of the person running the show.

Typewriters. 1867-2011
In 2011, the world’s last remaining manual typewriter manufacturer closed for good in Mumbai, India. It was the demise of an office and literary icon. Typewriters met their end, however, thanks to the arrival of word processors, followed closely behind by personal computers.

Card Catalogs. 1870s-2000
Most Millennials have never rifled through a wooden chest of drawers filled with numbered index cards in their local libraries. But for generations, that’s exactly how the Dewey Decimal System and the card catalog made finding books easy. Computers were doing the task by 2000.

Punch Cards. 1890-late 1980s
The punched-card tabulation system was first put into widespread use during the 1890 United States Census, although inventors had previously tinkered with earlier versions. The simple, highly efficient mass data collection system prevailed for nearly a century, when new technologies, like direct-recording electronic voting machines, emerged as replacements.

Highway Maps. 1890s-2013
The first road maps appeared at the dawn of the automotive era to help drivers of “horseless carriages” navigate the few horrendous roads that existed. Around a century later, GPS became available to the masses, which eventually led many states to reduce print runs or even stop printing the traditional American highway map altogether.

Bench Seats in Cars. 1911-1980s
Chevrolet introduced the bench seat, which was cheaper and allowed more occupants than individual seats. By the mid-1980s, however, cupholders and center consoles arrived, which would signal the downfall of the classic bench seat.

Car Ashtrays. 1926-1994
One of the earliest ashtrays ever to be built into a car was found in the 1926 Rolls Royce Phantom limousine. Smokers continued to ash their cigarettes in on-board ashtrays for decades to come, while nonsmokers filled them with coins, garage door openers and whatever didn’t fit in the glove compartment. By 1994, however, smoking was out of vogue and Chrysler became the first automaker to offer ashtrays only as an option

Filmstrips. 1940s-1980s
Near the end of World War II, filmstrips emerged as a practical alternative to clunky 16mm film for educational or training purposes. Easy to store and easy to use, filmstrips were a practical alternative to 35mm films. By the 1980s, however, compact and efficient video players, including VHS, rendered filmstrip projectors obsolete

VHS. 1977-2005
The world met the Video Home System (VHS), and the video cassette recorders that brought them to life in 1977. In one of the greatest rivalries in the history of technology, VHS would eventually spell the death knell for Sony’s rival Betamax. Although the VCR and VHS tape were largely rendered obsolete by the turn of the millennium, the once-revolutionary technology limped into the digital age, until the Washington Post officially wrote its obituary on Aug. 28, 2005.

Vinyl Albums. 1948-1993
Although vinyl records would play for a few more years – mostly in jukeboxes and on DJ turntables – the vinyl album was all but extinct by 1993, thanks to the skyrocketing popularity of the compact disc. Although plenty of music lovers continue to cling to the easily scratchable black disks to this day and vinyl loyalists have helped drive a recent resurgence in production and sales (though still low by past standards), the rise of CD spelled the end for the record, which Columbia Records first introduced in 1948

Compact Discs. 1982-2013
In 1982, Billy Joel’s “52nd Street” became the first commercially available compact disc. MP3s, streaming music services and the internet would eventually render obsolete the little shiny disc that killed the records and tapes that came before. In 2013, Kanye West released the album “Yeezus” in a transparent case with no record art, which the rapper claimed was an open casket funeral for the CD.

Sony Walkman. 1979-2010
Few devices are as iconic as the vaunted Sony Walkman, which made on-the-go stereo sound possible for the masses long before MP3 players and iPods. The Walkman cassette player debuted in 1979 and sold 220 million units over the course of three decades, even as CDs and other digital technology wiped out classic tapes. Finally, in 2010, Sony announced that it was ceasing production of one of the defining devices of the 1980s – it was the same year Sony stopped making 3.5-inch floppy disks

8-Track Technology. 1950s-1982
In the 1950s, 8-track players emerged and revolutionized how people listened to music while in the car . No longer at the mercy of the radio, drivers could now cruise and listen to whatever they wanted whenever they wanted – until 1982, that is, when cassette tapes proved to be cheaper, smaller and better quality.

Floppy Disks. 1981-1998
Although Sony would continue to sell them in Japan for another 12 years, the floppy disk – with its massive 1.44 MB of storage – received a fatal blow in 1998. That’s when Apple unveiled the iMac G3, which introduced the first USB port – and dropped support for the aging floppy disk

Console TV. 1960s-late 1990s
By the mid-1950s, half of America had a television in the home. For decades starting with the earliest color models, televisions were designed as furniture, partly to make the TV the focal point of the home. Today, televisions are bigger than they’ve ever been, but the design concept has done a 180 from the days of the so-called console TV. Instead of being a bulky focal point, today’s giants are sleek, unassuming and built to blend.

Overhead Projectors. Early 1960s-2015
Big metal boxes with glass tops and protruding upper appendages called overhead projectors once did the heavy lifting at corporate meetings, in classrooms, at weddings and just about anywhere images needed to be displayed for groups of people. They usually worked their magic on makeshift movie screens that pulled down and rolled up from the ceiling like old-fashioned window shades. In 2015, the University of Colorado in Boulder put its remaining 225 projectors out to pasture, just one of many schools, institutions and facilities that have opted for the countless better, smaller, cheaper and more reliable digital options available at their fingertips

Super 8MM Film. 1965-1970s
The advent of 8mm film kicked off the era of amateur film making, but the Super 8mm format was an even bigger hit with inexperienced amateurs, who found it easier to use and more professional-looking. In 1963, it got even better when the addition of a magnetic strip made it possible to record audio along with video. New cassette-based formats would soon render both 8mm and Super 8mm films obsolete

The Polaroid SX-70. 1972 – mid-2000s
The world was introduced to instant photography in 1972, when a Polaroid executive snapped five snapshots in just 10 seconds with the game-changing SX-70. Over the decades, the game changed again, and then yet again. Although you can still pick up an SX-70 brand new from Polaroid, provided you’re comfortable with a $400-plus price tag, the iconic devices are living relics. Like other things in the realm of picture taking, these have been made largely obsolete with the advent of smartphones and digital photography.

Calculator Watches. 1975-1980s
Long before smartphones put clocks and calculators in our pockets, the calculator watch debuted as the ultimate in geek chic. Wristwatch and number-cruncher all-in-one, the calculator watch soon fell victim to the PDA and early cell phones.

GPS Devices. 2000-early 2010s
In 2009, two years after Apple ushered in the era of the smartphone, PCWorld ran an article titled “Google Maps Will Not Kill Standalone GPS.” Just three years later, Wired ran an article with the headline “Apple, Google Just Killed Portable GPS Devices.” The second article was right. Advances in smartphone-based GPS apps, GPS platforms built into vehicles, and the rise of the unlimited mobile data plan quickly rendered dashboard-mounted bricks sold under brands like Garmin and TomTom redundant and obsolete.

Scammers Target Elderly

“There’s a sucker born every minute” is a phrase closely associated with P. T. Barnum, an American showman of the mid-19th century, although there is no evidence that he actually said it. Early examples of its use are found among gamblers and confidence men.

No matter who uttered the phrase, seniors are being targeted in a new real estate scam that seems to prove it. Scammers are having some success in getting seniors to sign over their home for far below market value.

Mary Ann Welch, 70, shared with Capital Public Radio how she received a letter in her mailbox that offered to buy her Sunnyvale, Calif., home for $750,000. The letter included paperwork for her to sign and consent to sell. Welch had not put the house up for rent or for sale. The two-bedroom home is within walking distance of Apple, Google and LinkedIn, and is valued at more than $1.5 million.

“I saw the contract for me to sign and I was furious,” Welch told Capital Public Radio. “If I had Alzheimer’s or if I was demented at all, I would have signed it thinking I would get all this money. If they’re doing it to me, they’re going to be doing it to others.”

Cherie Bourlard, Santa Clara County’s deputy district attorney, says they’ve seen an uptick in cases that involve direct solicitations to elderly homeowners that contain offers well below market value for their home.

Housing markets where prices have risen quickly may be most prime for the scam. Homeowners may “have no idea of the value of the homes they’re sitting on,” Bourlard says. “They remember buying their home for $40,000 but in these crazy upswings of market value, they have no idea their property might be worth $800,000, $1 million, $2 million.”

The scams targeting the elderly may not be voidable either for those who sign. “They might not clearly understand what they’re doing,” Bourlard says. “But they have enough [mental] capacity to where the transaction is not voidable. Studies show as we age, we become less savvy in financial transactions.”

The Good and Bad of Changes Ahead

At Columbia University in 2017, Microsoft co-founder and billionaire Bill Gates and his billionaire buddy Warren Buffett discussed increased productivity. The idea that more output per capita “should be harmful to society is crazy,” says Buffett. “If one person could push a button and turn out everything we turn out now, is that good for the world or bad for the world?” asks Buffett, the CEO of investment house Berkshire Hathaway. “You would free up all kinds of possibilities for everything else.”

“The macro picture that it enables is an opportunity,” agrees Gates. But, he adds, it “really forces us to look at the individuals affected and take those extra resources and make sure they are directed to them in terms of re-education and income policies.”

Buffett and Gates think it’s ‘crazy’ to view job-stealing robots as bad. Technological innovation is rapidly increasing the potential of human productivity. In the short run, those advances mean that many workers, particularly those in lower-skilled positions, will lose their jobs to automation. But Buffett and Gates say that increasing the potential output of each human being is always a good thing.

In the coming years, an increasing number of jobs are likely to be on the chopping block. Nearly half of U.S. jobs will potentially be replaced by robots and automated technology in the next 10 to 20 years, according to a 2013 study by Oxford University’s Carl Frey and Michael Osborne. In particular, transportation, logistics, office management and production workers are likely to be the first to lose their jobs to robots.

Those figures are more dire in less developed countries. A 2016 analysis from the World Bank estimated that roughly two-thirds of all jobs in developing nations around the globe are susceptible to replacement by automation.

Buffett cautions that the trend towards automation replacing lower-skilled labor is not new. “If we were here in 1800 and conducting this, somebody would point out that eventually tractors would come along and better fertilizer and that 80 percent of the people are now employed on the farm and in couple hundred years it is going to be 2 or 3 percent, and what are we going to do with all these people?” says Buffett. “Well, the answer is we released them.”

With fewer people needed to work on farms, more are able to pursue other skills and vocations.
“The macro picture that it enables is an opportunity,” says Gates. While both billionaires are self-avowed optimists and firmly preach the potential of a better future with robots doing more of our mundane or repetitive skills, both stress the importance of some form of wealth redistribution.

If robots take your job, the government might have to pay you to live. “Everything should be devoted initially to getting greater productivity,” says Buffett. “But people who fall by the wayside, through no fault of their own, as the goose lays more golden eggs, should still get a chance to participate in that prosperity. “And that is where government comes in.”

Buffett, Gates and SpaceX and Tesla’s Elon Musk agree that it’s a virtual inevitability that, as robots replace more and more jobs, the U.S. will have to implement a program of cash payments distributed to everyone. As founding members of The Giving Pledge, Buffett and Gates are already making moves in that direction, having committed to donate more than half of the wealth they have amassed. “A problem of excess really forces us to look at the individuals affected and take those extra resources and make sure they are directed to them in terms of re-education and income policies,” says Gates.

“Yeah, I am not sure exactly what to do about this. This is really the scariest problem to me, I will tell you.”
Transportation operators will be the first to lose their jobs, says Musk. The U.S. Department of Transportation says one in seven jobs in the U.S. is transportation-related. But no job is safe, he says. “Transport will be one of the first to go fully autonomous. But when I say everything — the robots will be able to do everything, bar nothing.”

Robots are getting smarter faster than expected. Artificial intelligence experts thought that it would be at least 20 years before a computer could beat a human playing Go, a strategy game that is more complex than chess. Last year, AlphaGo, a division of Google subsidiary Deep Mind, “absolutely crushed the world’s best player. And now it can crush and play the top 50 simultaneously and crush them all,” Musk says.
“That pace of progress is remarkable. Robots will be able to do everything better than us,” adds Musk.

Robots are now able to teach themselves physical skills faster than humans can. “You can see robots that can learn to walk from nothing within hours, way faster than any biological being,” Musk says.

“The thing that is the most dangerous — and it is the hardest to get your arms around because it is not a physical thing — is a deep intelligence in the network. “You say, ‘What harm can a deep intelligence in the network do?’ Well, it can start a war by doing fake news and spoofing email accounts and doing fake press releases and by manipulating information,” Musk says. Musk says that people are not as afraid of the potential of robotics and artificial intelligence as they should be because they don’t fully understand its potential.

“I have exposure to the most cutting edge A.I., and I think people should be really concerned by it,” he says.
“A.I. is a fundamental risk to the existence of human civilization in a way that car accidents, airplane crashes, faulty drugs or bad food were not — they were harmful to a set of individuals within society, of course, but they were not harmful to society as a whole.”

According to Musk, the solution is to increase regulatory oversight of the development and implementation of artificial intelligence as soon as possible. “A.I. is a rare case where I think we need to be proactive in regulation than be reactive,” he says.

So is there any upside to all this? Yes, say some of the most successful tech billionaires. Entrepreneur Mark Cuban has said he thinks the world’s first trillionaire will be an artificial intelligence entrepreneur. And in the big picture, robots taking over jobs can be a good thing, says Gates.