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What politician has the guts to say that if you aren't a college graduate, chances are that your future is going to be extremely bleak in a generation. If you have an IQ of 85, your ability to produce anything will not be cost efficient and any job you get will be basically charity.

I actually see the opposite happening. Many of the jobs being lost are highly skilled positions such as computer programmers, technical support reps, system analysts, etc. These are the jobs moving to India, Singapore and elsewhere for a fraction of the cost it takes to hire somebody with the same skills. Meanwhile, it seems that every restaurant I go to is looking for waitstaff, dishwashers, etc.

Don't get me wrong. I'm very disturbed by this scenario also.

Sam, manufacturing jobs are bleeding faster than IT jobs. Twice as fast as a matter of fact. It's a crapshoot for the layed off. Do you get offered a job at 1/3 your wages in the first place? The employers out there do not like hiring people they know will be gone the second a better paying job is available. Honestly, many of these people won't take the low paying jobs. They refinance their mortgage, and hold out hope that they can get their old paycheck back.

This is leading to some employment opportunities waitressing and the like. The trends though aren't good. As I pointed out, much is being automated. Go to a McDonald's sometimes and carefully observe. They are soon going to be able to employ less people. Everything, from the menus, to the soda dispensors are going electronic, taking away the low skilled job.

The restaurant industry already has created an automated hamburger flipper. Cost is the only thing keeping it out of widespread usage now. It actually flips burgers on a grill with multiple burgers, probes them for temperature, sterilizing the probe each time, before checking the next. Once actual production models are starting to be made, 5 years perhaps, those jobs are gone. No point in hiring 3 hamburger flippers, with workman's comp potential, salary demands, when you can get a faster safer job done by machinery.

There still will be some workers there to actually hand you your food, but the jobs will shrink. There will be a rise in teen-age unemployment, when jobs teens traditionally take are cheaper to do through automation. Retail is what is left, but the teen agers will be competing with 20-25 year old, non college material types for those jobs.

I am not blaming anybody for this. It is progress, but there are large potential consequences.