Personal Finance News from Yahoo! Finance"Economists believe that many of the jobs lost in the 'great recession' will be coming back. Construction and high finance positions that were temporarily slashed, for example, are expected to steadily return. Regardless of the economic dip, however, several career paths have been declining for years due to larger structural changes in the economy. These dying occupations are headed for the trash pile.
'The kinds of jobs that are disappearing are the jobs that pay really well [for] relatively unskilled workers,' says Harry Holzer, Ph.D., Georgetown University economist and co-author of 'Where Are All The Good Jobs Going.' He lists manufacturing jobs as a leading example, saying that well-paid assembly jobs that require modest training and only a high school diploma or less are a thing of the past.
So where did all the good jobs go? 'The combination of technological advancement and off-shoring has shrunk these jobs,' says Holzer.
Technology has certainly put postal service mail sorters on the chopping block. After losing almost 57,000 jobs between 2004 and 2009, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) expects a further 30% decline in this occupation by 2018.
According to jobs researcher and author of '2011 Career Plan,' Laurence Shatkin, Ph.D., this occupation has seen some erosion from increased communication via phone, e-mail and cloud computing. Yet the chief reason for the decline, Shatkin says, is that mail sorting has become mostly automated, and robots are replacing people.
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