7 Middle Class Jobs Vanishing In America

The American economy has been gaining strength for several years, yet we've recovered less than half the jobs we lost. Many say this is because businesses don't want to spend the cash to hire. Others blame it on companies shipping jobs to cheaper hands overseas. But according to an analysis by The Associated Press, most of those jobs have completely vanished, perhaps for our lifetimes, because of tech that's here to stay.
In the past few tight years, companies have been all the more eager to adopt new technology, if it meant shaving off some labor costs. This has happened over and over again since the industrial revolution; technological advancements lead to bouts of higher unemployment. But in the end, new and more sophisticated jobs are made, and productivity and living standards rise.
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Unfortunately, those periods of transition can be long and tortured. And according to the Associated Press, we've only just begun.It isn't just assembly line workers who risk replacement by robot; many service-sector jobs -- the largest pillar of our workforce -- disappeared during the recession, and continue to disappear during the recovery. Many white collar jobs that require bachelor's degrees have felt the squeeze too. As long as a brilliant wunderkind can write a piece of software to do the job, the job is no longer safe.
Here are seven middle class jobs that are currently vanishing:
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Claire Gordon
Claire Gordon has contributed to Slate's DoubleX, the Huffington Post, and the book Prisons: Current Controversies. While an undergraduate at Yale University and a research fellow at Yale graduate school, she spoke on panels at Yale and Cornell, and reported from Cairo, Tokyo, and Berlin. Follow Claire on Twitter. Email Claire at claire.gordon@teamaol.com. Add Claire to your Google+ circles.
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