The Sheconomy Revisited

Key takeaway - in the main, the redder the line (more female), the higher it slopes up; the bluer the line (more male), the steeper it slopes down.

The Changing Nature of Middle-Class Jobs (Big Picture)

Soon, everyone will be a nurse.

 Right now the compass seems to be pointing in the direction of health care.  That probably won’t change anytime soon:

In 1980, 1.4 million jobs in health care paid a middle class wage: $40,000 to $80,000 a year in today’s money. Now, the figure is 4.5 million.

The pay of registered nurses — now the third-largest middle-income occupation and one that continues to be overwhelmingly female — has risen strongly along with the increasing demands of the job. The median salary of $61,000 a year in 2012 was 55 percent greater, adjusted for inflation, than three decades earlier.

And it was about $9,000 more than the shriveled wages of, say, a phone company repairman, who would have been more likely to head a middle-class family in the 1980s. Back then, more than a quarter of middle-income jobs were in manufacturing, a sector long dominated by men. Today, it is just 13 percent.

The new and increasingly female path to the middle class (Marginal Revolution)

Here are the most common jobs right now:

Map: The Most Common Job In Every State (NPR) - Interactive map at the link showing change over time.

If self-driving cars are a reality, what about all the truck drivers?

Watch out, coders -- a robot may take your job, too (InfoWorld)

Jobs, automation, Engels’ pause and the limits of history (FT Alphaville)

Oh, and don't think a Ph.D. will help you: How an oversupply of PhDs could threaten American science (Teaching Report)