The New York Times is out with an interesting piece on the growing trend of men taking jobs in fields that are traditionally dominated by women. Interestingly, it may not be a bi-product of the post-financial crisis economy. Evidence suggests that the trend began years before the recession. From the Times:
The trend began well before the crash, and appears to be driven by a variety of factors, including financial concerns, quality-of-life issues and a gradual erosion of gender stereotypes. An analysis of census data by The New York Times shows that from 2000 to 2010, occupations that are more than 70 percent female accounted for almost a third of all job growth for men, double the share of the previous decade.
Interestingly, this is affecting men of varying degrees of education, with substantial growth amongst male college graduates. In fact, the shift is most pronounced among young, white college-educated males, many of whom are entering teaching or healthcare services.
While the evidence presented in the article seems to imply that the stigma of “women’s work” is fading and that men are taking these types of jobs due to higher professional satisfaction, I can’t help but believe that there is something else going on here.
Look, there is nothing wrong with a man working as a nurse or a teacher. With that said, this article is additional anecdotal evidence highlighting the structural issues in our economy. When I think about jobs like teaching and nursing, the two things they have in common are that people can be trained to do either role regardless of their background and they are difficult or impossible roles to outsource.
Furthermore, this accentuates the bi-furcated nature of today’s economy between those with specialized skills (or access to capital), and those without them. Those with highly specialized credentials will continue to thrive, while an ever growing population of unskilled or low skilled workers will fight for a shrinking pool of jobs.
What do you guys think? Am I reading too deeply into this? Am I completely off-base? Is being a nurse in an ER the new PE?
The safest job is to be a bureaucrat. I think the healthcare jobs are safer because they cannot be outsourced. It is not because they are highly specialized; look at any IT jobs that require programming, they are still be outsourced to India.
Personally, I think these jobs pay well, but not well enough for men to be the main breadwinner, who can support the entire family (as it used to be). We will see more families with two incomes as we already seen it happening. We will see shift in gender roles, perhaps women even earning higher than men. This would result into more adjustments in expectations between partners (despite more gender equality, I don't think we are that ready enough to shift away from the perception of men being the main breadwinner and trust me, women continue to expect this). This mismatch in expectation among partners would lead to a bit of conflicts until both men and women find a way to work it out.
Wrong. I see you have never heard of telemedicine. Already radiologists in Australia, India, and Israel are reading scans on U.S. patients. Most outsourced locations are designed to take advantage of the time difference. There are also the deployment of so called "service robots" that do dirty work, transporting linens and laundry.
See: The Robots Are Coming to Hospitals
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100014240527023044598045772813505258709…
^^^I am talking about Healthcare, which OP meant nursing. And nursing particularly for old people cannot be outsourced, until we have a fully functioning robots that can do every single thing. Radiologist is still considered a technology related job even if it were in Healthcare. As as any pure technical jobs are as you pointed out, are being outsourced.
Except that in the U.S. Radiologist have to go medical school and achieve high USMLE scores do an internship, and complete years of residency training. I am not sure how or why you would qualify a job that takes a medical degree as an "IT" job - where did you get that idea from?
I disagree, Human- healthcare jobs are not as nearly as safe as you might think. Healthcare margins, particularly providers and pharmaceuticals, are significantly wider than the average S & P 500 company; furthermore, more than 50% of their revenues are derived from government coffers. Now, what do you think will happen when government revenues are squeezed? Those fat margins are going to be cut as well as the pay for the healthcare providers. Did you know nurses can make $150-250,000 in California by manipulating the overtime pay requirements? When the cost-cutting becomes more acute, that will be stopped. Essentially, if you view the growth of healthcare employment as basically government jobs, it explains nearly all of the growth in the healthcare space.
Jim Chanos makes a great case to consider shorting the healthcare companies.
Very interested in this. Could you elaborate?
I'd be happy to. For the sake of analogy, let's broaden the topic. Over the last 20 years, there have been three major areas of government subsidy that have seen outsized growth. They are healthcare, housing, and post-secondary education. What is the common feature of these areas? They have all experienced expense growth that significantly exceeds the average inflation rates observed over the same period. Basically, an enormous amount of capital has been made available to these three areas and thus spawned a bloom of 'growth' based on increasingly generous government subsidies.
In education, it is expressed as higher tuition and fees because of direct or subsided loans that allow schools to divorce tuition costs from the expected return on a specialization. After increasing 400% since 1980, tuition is now the highest it has ever been (the financial crisis did nothing to stop its growth), and outstanding student debt is now larger than outstanding credit card debt at over $1 trillion. For housing, we saw that after a solid history of housing price appreciation closely mirroring inflation rates, subprime enabled by GSEs and general banking profligacy, created a boom in housing that dramatically increased housing prices followed by a radical re-pricing (price collapse).
Healthcare, I argue, exhibits the same relationship. The costs are not reflective of the value returned. I used to be pre-med and shadowed a doctor at my hometown hospital. I asked about the MRI scans and pricing of healthcare services. Through that conversation and some research, I found out some interesting things.
First, they charge as much as possible; Second, there is no price competition in healthcare; Lastly, they are compensated for performed services, not based on the necessity of those services. Also, this serves doubly as defensive medicine against potential liability claims.
There are a myriad of things wrong with the economics of the U.S. healthcare system, but these clearly demonstrate 'the fat in the system'. Government subsidies and the 'industries' they spawn are characterized by waste, excess, and mis-pricing. When government coffers are flush, this doesn't matter as much in the public eye. When revenues are lean, harder decisions and cuts must be made. Radical re-pricing is not optional, it is necessary- write downs, haircuts, and bankruptcy are a natural part of this cycle. We are coming into a period where revenues will be lean and efficiency will have to be increased.
My inference is that: 1) Existing subsidies are unsustainable; 2) When the subsidies end, the current prices are unsustainable; Therefore, when the subsidies end, the current prices will experience a significant drop in real terms*.
*I use the phrase 'real terms' because there could be an inflationary backlash that increases prices in nominal terms, decline in real terms vis-à-vis oil, gold, wheat, etc.
^^^Thanks for pointing this out. So why are those idiots from the OP's post doing. They went to college, get a woman's job, take a shitty/normal pay, and it is still unstable as shit. Why in the world would they get themselves into this mess? Sign of low intelligence?
My roommate is a nurse, and definitely doesn't fall into that category. He had a full tuition scholarship, and is now in the middle of a doctorate program. Nursing is viewed as a good profession to go into since nurses will probably be in demand for at least the next 100 years. Plus you can continue your education after undergrad and end up just one peg below a doctor.
There is a reason why women prefer men who are at the highest level of the food chain at whatever job they are working on. There are differences between doctors over nurses, pilots over flight attendants, and FO roles over BO/MO roles. Just because they work together doesn't mean that people view them as of equal calibers.
What jobs aren't unstable in 2012?
If you don't spend a significant portion of your time becoming more valuable you're more likely to get wiped the fuck out once the new robot comes or the new IT solution is released.
TIME had an interesting piece a few issues back on this very same thing. It seems women are really getting their shit together in terms of careers while men continue to expect that shit will fall in their laps.
I'm not sure what to think of your concerns. Unskilled industries are definitely on their way out, but hopefully we'll see some major infrastructure projects or something of that nature to push those workers into. In the absence a place to put all of these workers, we see their future generation (those that would otherwise fall back on manufacturing/low-skilled jobs) ending up as teachers and nurses. This can also be attributed, at least partially, to the major push by this country to attain a college degree. While nursing in an ER is not the new PE, it appears to be the new low-level management position. Men are ending up in these positions because their traditional positions are disappearing.
The fact that men are moving into these roles is a sign of the times it seems. Men have long had an advantage when it came to becoming educated and finding a career, and women are slowly removing that (although the one advantage we will forever hold onto is the lack of a uterus and thus childbearing responsibilities). Without manufacturing/industrial sectors to flee to and with thousands in student loans to pay off, men are ending up as teachers and nurses.
Nursing is the easiest way for someone of average intellect and average ambition to make a very good salary and minimize the number of hours they work while having almost complete control over their schedule.
There will soon be a glut of nurses and this situation is going bye bye.
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