This is kinda scary:
The United States has gained 387,000 managers but lost almost 2 million clerical jobs since 2007, as new technologies replace office workers and further squeeze the American middle class, government figures show.
Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, reported Monday by the Financial Times, divide the U.S. workforce into 821 jobs from dishwasher to librarian. They show rapid structural shifts amid the Great Recession that are likely to further increase income inequality, which has already been growing for decades.
Another BLS report, released last week, showed that employment rose in the nation’s major counties from September 2011 to September 2012, but average hourly wages fell.
The figures help explain why the U.S. median household income has fallen 5.6 per cent since June 2009 to $51,404, even as the economy – as measured by traditional yardsticks -- recovers. The top 10 per cent of earners, meanwhile, are reaping most benefits of the recovery.
One likely driver of inequality is new computing technologies that destroy some middle-class occupations even as they create jobs for highly skilled workers who can exploit them, as the FT notes.
The number of such clerical workers as bookkeepers, bank tellers, data entry keypunchers, file clerks and typists has been falling, pointing to a broad, structural decline. The number of retail cashiers has also dropped as online shopping and self-checkout systems erode another entry-level, low-wage occupation.
