Bad Times Spur a Flight to Jobs Viewed as Safe

New York Times ^ | Jan 24,2009 | LOUIS UCHITELLE

[SeekAndFind]

After years of struggling to get their wages up, the nation’s workers are trying to find jobs that will simply last, least through the deep recession.

Fearing layoffs, investment bankers at Merrill Lynch or Morgan Stanley are joining small Wall Street firms for less pay but with signed employment guarantees. Academics are migrating to community colleges, which are adding teachers as enrollment rises. In Eastern Wisconsin, workers furloughed from paper mill they fear will not reopen are training as truck drivers and welders.

“Looking online and in newspapers and talking to my instructors, I’ve decided that trucking and welding stand out as jobs that are available and will continue to be available, and a lot of my friends agree,” said Dan Geneen, who has picked up truck-driving certificate and is learning welding since he was let go by the paper mill last fall.

Trucker and welder are hardly glamorous careers to most Americans. But there is new allure developing around jobs likely to keep a person employed, at reasonable pay, through a prolonged downturn. Government employment once offered that promise, certainly in the Great Depression. But government hiring is less than robust now, at 181,000 additions over the last year, mostly at the state and local level. That is far from offsetting the 2.5 million jobs lost in the 13 months of recession.

With his economic recovery package now before Congress, President Obama promises to generate thousands of steady jobs, some of them in government. Until those positions appear in abundance, however, the hunt for safe work is occurring mainly in the private sector — and the hunting is not easy.

“The companies doing the least hiring now are very often the companies that offer the safest jobs,” said Susan Houseman, a senior economist labor expert at the Upjohn Institute

[Extremely Extreme Extremist]

This is a great article, totally agree. Americans are innovative, creative people. If you gots skillz, use them bad boys and learn some new stuff on the side. Also pay your debts down and don’t owe anyone a damn thing.

[durasell]

Yes, it seems as if people are getting the message. Hopefully.

[Chickensoup]

“As the recession deepens, the only industry in the private sector adding jobs in significant numbers is health care, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and it is doing so across the board, from physician to bed pan attendant.

Uhmmm. Health care is not in the private sector. It is primarily a government reimbursment program

[Spktyr]

Never too old to learn something new. My grandmother learned to ride a motorcycle at age 84.