By Dolores M. Bernal

Better be thinking about learning an extra trade or getting another college degree because according to employment trends, the job market for working Americans in the future seems pretty dire.

Late last year, Forbes published an opinion piece by former Secretary of Labor Robert B. Reich titled, “Manufacturing Jobs Are Never Coming Back” where he writes about the declining jobs in the manufacturing sector and how these jobs are, well, not coming back.

Blue collar workers and their families have been the worse affected by these disappearing jobs at car assembly and part plants, in the garment and apparel industry, etc. A total of 22 million jobs were gone between 1995 and 2002 and the jobs losses continue to rise.

According to Reich, even manufacturing jobs are disappearing in China. The reason? Higher productivity, more robots taking jobs away from real humans, and an explosion in the high tech industry.

At the turn of the 20th century, the assembly line opened the door to a mass of job opportunities to men and women alike. The two World Wars produced a boom in the manufacturing industry — many Americans reached the middle class and others became quite wealthy due to this. It was a prosperous time in America which led to many of our modern achievements, but that America is now gone.

The impact on seniors

Poverty among the elderly has been rising over the past decade, according to a Census Bureau report released on March 2. About 13 percent of the population is made out of people over 65 and, get this: 9.7 percent of them live in poverty.

Remember these were seniors that lived through the time period when manufacturing jobs exploded. Sure, many of them didn’t necessarily hold manufacturing jobs, but a good portion of them did. So, if seniors today are not making ends meet even though they lived their younger years during a time of many opportunities, what do you think is going to happen to people today who have lost their jobs and have no savings in let’s say, 30 more years? Will these also be seniors who will be living in poverty? Most likely.

The impact on you

With the rapid decline of manufacturing jobs in states like Ohio, Michigan, California, New York, etc., the job market becomes more saturated — the pool of blue collar workers needing to work becomes gigantic and their opportunities for employment shrink by the day. Most of those are out of work will never be able to work in manufacturing again.

This means that if you have a college degree and you can’t find a job right away, even your chances at getting a job that requires a lower set of skill, will be tough. Why? Because blue collar workers are turning to these jobs in order to survive. You see, a whole generation of people who once worked has suddenly being displaced.

No money for retraining

If you thought that the federal government is spending money to retrain people who once worked in the manufacturing industry, think again. In January, tampabay.com published an article about how Florida is struggling to find money to retrain workers. It was the same in Seattle almost a year ago, and last September in Chicago.

Stimulus money has helped fund some retraining projects in California, but there isn’t much of that going around elsewhere. How will we retrain an entire generation of blue collar workers and those who have lost their jobs in this last recession if the money isn’t there?

The educated American

The average yearly cost of a private college education is $35,636 and for a public education is $15,213, and this costs are rising. Most students are ending up with astonishing amounts of student loan debt and it will take 30 to 40 years to pay it off.

But even with a college degree the chances of finding a good job after graduation will be quite daunting. Most job industries are suffering job declines, the only ones growing: health care and computers. If you majored in English — one of the top 10 most popular majors at colleges campuses in the US, good luck — better start thinking of going back to school.

Indeed, many people holding just bachelor’s degrees are now going back for a Master’s degree. Times have changed and even though once upon a bachelor’s degree landed you a bright future, that is seldom the case now. But, can you afford more student loan debt?

A dire future

Well is there hope? Will Americans be able to enjoy prosperity again? It depends which Americans you’re talking about. There is one group that enjoys prosperity now and perhaps will for their rest of their lives: the rich. For many decades, the gap between the rich and poor has continued to widen.

From the NY Daily News:
The wealthiest 10 percent of Americans — those making more than $138,000 each year — earned 11.4 times the roughly $12,000 made by those living near or below the poverty line in 2008, according to newly released census figures. That ratio was an increase from 11.2 in 2007 and the previous high of 11.22 in 2003.

…Median income fell last year from $52,163 to $50,303, wiping out a decade’s worth of gains to hit the lowest level since 1997.

Poverty jumped sharply to 13.2 percent, an 11-year high.

President Barack Obama hasn’t taken any steps to close that gap, in fact, his bailout package or TARP money made Wall Street moguls even richer. When the recession took hold of the country, the only ones getting the aid were the banks. There was nothing for the struggling American family, all they kept saying was that “it will trickle down to them eventually.” Yes, when they have lost their homes, filed for bankruptcy, or shot to death their whole family.

Until Americans wake up and smell the putrid smell of poverty, the politicians in Washington will continue to pass tax breaks for the wealthy, find ways to accommodate and please business interests, and get into wars with countries in the middle east. But why?

Civic participation is something that has been fluctuating for years — in the 1960 presidential election, 63.1 percent of Americans cast their vote, in 1996 it was only 49.1 percent. In the 2008 election we saw some improvement with 56.8 percent of voters casting votes. Will we ever see at least 70 to 80 percent of Americans turn out to vote for needed reforms?

The erosion of our so-called Democracy and freedoms (i.e FISA and the Patriot Act) will not lead to more jobs or prosperous times for American families — well maybe in the prison system. Correctional jobs are on the rise, just take a look at this:

The growing prison population will create new supervisory positions and correctional officer posts, resulting in a faster-than-average employment growth rate through 2012 for correctional officers. Inmate populations will likely increase as an effect of mandatory sentencing laws resulting in reduced parole and longer sentences.

A ray of light

Two things could make our economy improve and could bring back needed jobs for blue collar workers and other workers: 1) A shift in the business world, away from profit-making goals to solution-oriented goals, and 2) Good-paying green jobs and a strong green tech industry.

We know that the first proposition may never happen, but the second has a better chance. Right now we face a battle with an increase of toxic and polluting greenhouse gases. Energy conservation is a must if we don’t want to burn more fossil fuels for electricity generation. We have an opportunity to turn those manufacturing jobs into green jobs where the US becomes the #1 exporter of solar panels, for example. But those “green collar” jobs need to be good-paying jobs with benefits that can once again lift working Americans to the middle-class.

One of the bills that hasn’t come to debate or vote in the Senate floor is the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (ACES) or also known as the “Waxman Bill.” There are provisions in that bill that can set a solid foundation for growth in the green manufacturing industry. This bill is a ray of light for the future of American working families. There are some things in the bill that I, personally, don’t like — it could have been a better bill if emission standards had been tightened more, but the bill is still a good beginning.

Former White House adviser on green jobs, Van Jones, was a visionary who could see clearly that investing in this sector could greatly benefit Americans. Unfortunately, the conservatives managed to get him removed after some insignificant video surfaced, showing Jones calling Republicans “assholes” at a conference. The idiotic sensitivity of some Republicans squashed Jones’ plan to move forward with green job initiatives. This alone probably cost Americans millions of jobs that could have been created.

China and South Korea are already ahead of the curb in creating green jobs in their own countries. They want to be leaders in the industry, just like Japan leads the world in the electronic industry.

From the ChinaDaily.com (August 2009):
China is winning a global race to create “green collar” jobs, six months after countries worldwide launched $500 billion spending plans to drive a low-carbon economy.

Following the economic downturn, both the United States and Europe aim to spur jobs in a green push to fight climate change and boost energy security, but China may leapfrog both this year in new wind power – a key measure.

Republicans in the senate don’t want the Waxman Bill to pass because they are looking after the interest of the oil and coal industries. The bill would force “dirty” corporations to buy “pollution credits” if they want to continue doing business as usual: freely polluting our air and water.

There is more to the Waxman Bill, but in a nutshell, this is something that in order to pass it needs the support of all Democrats in the senate, plus the few moderates in the GOP (Sen. Susan Collins, Sen. Olympia Snowe).

Yes, there is hope if Americans pay a little more attention to legislation that could benefit them. They need to be more active and outspoken. They need to put pressure on their elected officials and get them to look after their interest, instead of that of corporations. The key is not to give up even if the future looks gloomy. Change has always occurred. The party of real change is certainly somewhere out there, but it must first happen within you.