Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Chart of the week: Holy cow, manufacturing!




Photo credit: NPR/Planet Money
Hey, manufacturing -- that's chemistry, isn't it? Uh-oh.

(I believe that pharmaceutical manufacturing is where pharma jobs get classified; I don't believe we get put under the health care category.)

Looks like folks working retail are slightly better off. Huh.
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8 comments:

  1. AnonymousJanuary 12, 2011 at 8:26 AM

    Gotta love that the financial sector is responsible for the mess that we're in and yet their loss of jobs is barely a blip on the radar. Real comforting to know that when these greedy SOBs gamble it isn't for their own jobs, but other people's.

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  2. AnonymousJanuary 12, 2011 at 9:51 AM

    Chemjobber: Perhaps chemists and other professional researchers (is that the same as research professionals?) are classified as "unpersons" who can be conveniently overlooked by the New Great Society. Oh well, so much for my aspirations of becoming an Inner Party Member.

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  3. AnonymousJanuary 13, 2011 at 1:12 AM

    From what I've read, though manufacturing jobs have been in decline for decades, the U.S. share of world manufacturing has remained steady since the 1970's. We've just become far more productive at it. There's no way for an economy to grow unless there are new, cheap ways to make goods. Job losses in that area are simply the trade off we have to deal with. Chemistry is just another casualty who's time has come.

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  4. AnonymousJanuary 13, 2011 at 5:37 PM

    I'm always curious when I see these charts, what *are* all the health care jobs that are being added? Are these doctors or anyone with high-level training, or just, say, medical assistant types?

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  5. ChemjobberJanuary 13, 2011 at 7:39 PM

    A2:37p:

    This BLS table says a little of both:

    Fastest growing occupations [2008-2018]

    1. Biomedical engineers
    3. Home health aides
    4. Personal and home health aides
    6. Physician assistants
    11. Physical therapist aides
    12. Dental hygienists
    14. Dental assistants
    16. Medical assistants

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  6. ChemjobberJanuary 13, 2011 at 7:40 PM

    P.S. Here's the table: http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_table_103.htm

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  7. AnonymousJanuary 13, 2011 at 8:19 PM

    Don't know if you saw this, but it looked like something you would like to play with. The WSJ went through the BLS stats and has a tool to let you graph unemployment by profession. It is searchable.

    http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703791904576075652301620440.html

    For "chemist and material scientist" it shows unemployment dropping from 4.5 to 3.1 in 2009-2010, but the total employed dropping from 113K to 103K at the same time, suggesting lots of chemists leaving the workforce or finding something else to do.

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  8. ChemjobberJanuary 13, 2011 at 10:12 PM

    A5:19p: That's pretty cool! Thanks!

    ReplyDelete

looks like Blogger doesn't work with anonymous comments from Chrome browsers at the moment - works in Microsoft Edge, or from Chrome with a Blogger account - sorry! CJ 3/21/20