The short list of jobs with high and rising pay

[analog31]

I've often thought that Physician Assistant might be a decent gig. Pay isn't stratospheric, but you can work anywhere in the country (a factor for two career families) and the training costs can't possibly be as extreme as a full physician.

There may be fewer "insider" investment opportunities available to physicians. Salary income for physicians is only part of their earning potential.

[jseliger]

This is an astute comment. I live with a physician and have met lots of physicians who wish they'd been PAs instead, for reasons I enumerate here: http://jakeseliger.com/2012/10/20/why-you-should-become-a-nu.... Even the name is a misnomer, because PAs increasingly practice autonomously, so the "assistant" part of the job title is increasingly a misnomer or historical curiosity.

Among policy wonks, there's a meme going round about how healthcare jobs are the new manufacturing jobs. See here for one example: http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/01/25/decline_of_ma....

[madengr]

How is pay for a dermatology PA? Don't they have a special designation?

[Madmallard]

Mostly manager positions at the top. That's how you know society is falling apart. When it starts becoming an old boys club with shared resources among guys that don't do anything useful.

[dimal]

Has there ever been a time in which managers weren't making more money than everyone else? By your logic, society has always been falling apart. Every generation creates its own old boys club.

[juicenx]

> shared resources among guys that don't do anything useful.

Go be on a team with a shitty manager, I bet you'll soon find out that they are VERY useful...

[limeyx]

It's when the telephone sanitizers come in second that you know we are really in trouble.....

[madengr]

A link in the article shows a drastic drop in manufacturing during mid-90s. Ross Perot was spot on about NAFTA and the giant sucking sound: http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2016/06/20/as-low-skilled-job...

[adventured]

Three counter points to that claim.

1) US manufacturing real output, 1985-2015:

http://i.imgur.com/QMRdpJO.png

2) Total construction spending on manufacturing:

http://i.imgur.com/pXKLGdy.png

3) Real manufacturing output per US worker, 1947-2011:

http://i.imgur.com/8SSHwiJ.jpg

Real manufacturing output is far higher today than when NAFTA began. That giant sucking sound, is mostly productivity gains ending jobs that apparently no longer needed to exist.

[analog31]

Did those jobs move to Canada and Mexico? On the other hand, it's my understanding that NAFTA also provides for cross-border portability for some occupations, notably engineers.

[api_or_ipa]

NAFTA isn't what caused the changes in the labour market you lament. 2nd wave globalization, a shift to a knowledge economy and changes in social equality, especially with the rise of women in the workforce and the acceptance of child raising men all contributed to major changes in the labour force

[jseliger]

Hardly. Ricardo still rules and virtually no one who says things like the above even understands gain from trade. Moreover, it turns out that NAFTA may have actually saved the US auto industry: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/30/business/economy/nafta-may....

[beatpanda]

At some point, the owners of capital are going to have to just start distributing a greater share of their profit as wages. Any other solution for stagnant wages is just making excuses for antisocial behavior.

[Trundle]

Why wages? It seems backward to tie income to effort more so than the market wants to reward. How taxing it and distributing it as just transfer payments is making excuses for anti-social behaviour I have no idea. Do you want to see masses of people performing low or nil value tasks for forty hours a week? That's what unnecessarily tying income to jobs will lead to.

[mback00]

Um... the revolution of productivity that his happening in the workplace will likely enhance social behaviour and especially creative behaviour. The last revolution was about applying personal computing to the work environment - which did eliminate a lot of jobs, but created many more creative ones... and also brought about a much greater connectedness between human beings - first through email and then through social media. The next revolution is through robotics and one that will free many people from mundane tasks to much more creative ones... Bringing manufacturing back to the garage, and opening the opportuity for profit to many more people. In the same way, robotics/ai will also reduce traffic and provide a service where a person can have a physical presence virtually anywhere on the globe. We do not yet know the implications of the latest technological innovations - but history has definitely proven that each one only enhances not only our productivity (and "fun") but also our social connectedness.

[madengr]

Or they just use it to buy other companies. The buyouts and mergers over the last year are tiring.

[toomuchtodo]

They don't have to. We have to force it with regulations. And if you still don't cooperate, we'll pull the enforcement of your patents and copyrights.

[p4wnc6]

Love how 10 of the listed job categories are some form of managers. No rent seeking here folks ... move along.

[douche]

Eventually we'll get to a point where it is just a circular hierarchy of managers managing other managers managing the first set of managers. Emails and meetings will fly around ceaselessly, while the machines churn away.