The Jobs of the 21st Century

I consider myself a fan of the reports issued by the Council of Economic Advisers. Under the leadership of Christina Romer, they've actually been quite good. Who could forget, for instance, the thrills, twists, and unforgettable characters of "The Economic Case for Health Reform"? It was classic. Absolutely classic.

Sadly, the council's latest release, "Preparing the Workers of Today for the Jobs of Tomorrow," is a bit of a slog. We learn, for instance, that "at an aggregate level, the data indicate that the economy of 2016 will resemble the economy of 2008." Color me unsurprised. Similarly, "well-trained and highly-skilled workers will be best positioned to secure high-wage jobs, thereby fueling American prosperity." And "the nation’s workers will be better prepared for ever-changing opportunities if they have strong analytical and interpersonal skills."

if you needed a CEA report to tell you these things, you're probably not prepared for the jobs of the 21st century. But dig further into the paper and things get a bit more interesting, and a bit scarier. There are caveats here, of course. Predictions are hard, especially about the future. But the following graph charts the sectors that the CEA considers likeliest to add significant numbers of jobs between now and 2016. "We exclude the government sector," they say, "which is not projected to grow notably in its share of overall employment." But what you'll see in this chart is that the government sector is projected to fund a lot of the growth in employment:

"Other medical services" are things like home health aides, who mostly help the elderly, and are largely paid for by Medicare. Private hospitals, physicians, and nursing homes are getting both private and public health care dollars. Education is largely funded by the state, and the report attributes the burst in construction to green technology, which is also heavy on public involvement.

Is this a problem? Not necessarily. But it's evidence of a couple of things. The first is that the private sector is not projected to do a lot of job creation on its lonesome over the next couple of years. The second is that the public sector has a lot of influence over the shape of the industries with heavy growth over the next decade or so. And the third is that a lot of the job creation we are going to get is coming in sectors -- health care and education -- that everyone agrees aren't working too well, and so it's not clear that this will be a terrifically productive bunch of new jobs.