Via Business Insider and the NY Times:
The good news, however, is that middle-education, middle-wage jobs are not slated to disappear completely. While many middle-skill jobs are susceptible to automation, others demand a mixture of tasks that take advantage of human flexibility. To take one prominent example, medical paraprofessional jobs — radiology technician, phlebotomist, nurse technician — are a rapidly growing category of relatively well-paid, middle-skill occupations. While these paraprofessions do not typically require a four-year college degree, they do demand some postsecondary vocational training.
Points:
- “These middle-skill jobs [paraprofessions] will persist, and potentially grow, because they involve tasks that cannot readily be unbundled without a substantial drop in quality.”
- “…the middle-skill jobs that survive will combine routine technical tasks with abstract and manual tasks in which workers have a comparative advantage — interpersonal interaction, adaptability and problem-solving.”
- “There will be job opportunities in middle-skill jobs, but not in the traditional blue-collar production and white-collar office jobs of the past.”