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Nice, generic, answer.

That is the challenge -- figuring out where the next boom will be. And if it takes several years of college to retrain, then timing is another variable.

Unfortunately, many of the jobs being outsourced are not of the hamburger flipping variety (that anyone can do with little training). The jobs are high paying, middle class to upper middle class jobs that take several years of training to become proficient. The "replacement jobs" are likely to require many years of training, too.

I will keep my ear to the rail...

That is the challenge -- figuring out where the next boom will be. I got laid off last year. I quickly determined that what I was good/skilled at was not what was in demand in the job market. I figured this out by looking at the skill requirements listed in job postings. I grabbed up the books, took some juco classes, and got my skills up in the areas that were in demand. Don't waste your time thinking about what you can't do, ask "what can I do to be more valuable?"

Those jobs, moreover, represented a substantial committent of time and money to train for them -- such a committent made in the comfort of government and business projections of the longevity of those careers. Many of use borrowed the money that the government made available -- as part of the National Defense Student Loan program, thinking, gee willikers, we were taking the harder educational road of science and technology to best serve not only our own interests but those of our nation.

If not for those then-honest and good faith projections on the part of the government, the colleges and the business press and associations, if not for that money made available based on that good faith need and projections of need -- we would have chosen careers that had a better operating history, that is -- that were proven business models.