A fantastic post by Matthew Yglesias about the future of employment
He theorizes that since the passage of Healthcare Reform (expanding health insurance to the tens of millions of uninsured people) and the retiring of the large Baby Boomer generation, the next high paying jobs will be in the healthcare industry.
His theory is based on the fact that healthcare employment has grown faster as a share of overall employment. Even in the worst part of the recession, employment in healthcare did not go down.
The economic concept of Elasticity of Demand explains why healthcare employment did not go down despite widespread unemployment.
Elasticity of Demand refers to the change in demand due to changes in price.
Usually when income goes down so does expenditures because, obviously, if you have less money you will spend less. However there are certain goods that are so necessary for survival, that a drop in income would not significantly reduce demand.
Healthcare is so important especially to an aging population that people would sacrifice comforts in life to prevent any interruption.
Now you may wonder if everyone is working in the healthcare industry, who will take over the unskilled jobs many of us do now?
Those jobs will be automated, making the cost of those goods and services cheaper by not having to pay employees or have labor or court costs. So we'll have lower prices and better jobs with more security because healthcare cannot be outsourced.
I think high paying aspects of the job field will dissipate shortly for most positions. its already happening in nursing: a nurse isnt as highly paid as in the past, and roles are being broken down and divided, passing some of the job functions onto lower skilled medical assistants. The jobs will be there for sure, but maybe not the wages ones expects.
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