10.07.10

Hot Jobs: Natsec & home-visit bedpan techs

Posted in Stumble and Fail at 4:08 pm by George Smith

UPDATED

The farce of “Hot Jobs” news stories on Yahoo remains a relentlessly good mine for gallows humor. You can tell a lot about the state of the nation — failed — by observing the labor it’s hiring.

The new name for bedpan technician is “Home Health Aide.”

Future job prospects are good for the multi-skilled home oxygen & drainage tubing techs/wheelchair pushers/pill caddy fillers, reassigned from the clinic to duty where the elderly and infirm are being warehoused in place. “Help, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!” rings across the land, louder every year.

These are $20k/year jobs with little benefits. (Considering the nature of the work, they actually should be compensated much more richly.) So if you live in the big city, unless you’re bunking up with multiple roomies or your spouse has a better paying gig, you’ll be consuming bagloads of freeze-dried noodles.

Much better prospects await those who can capitalize on national paranoia and the war on terror infrastructure, a guarantor of job creation because it actively searches for new enemies and, therefore, always has a growing need for staff.

Yahoo Hot Jobs recommends career futures in Homeland Security:

If you are looking for a challenging career with high stakes, consider Homeland Security. The Department of Homeland Security, which was formed as a result of the September 11 attacks, is responsible for everything from cyber security to border protection. As just one example of this career’s growth pattern, in August 2010, President Obama signed a $600 million bill that pays for 1,000 new Border Patrol agents.

It’s true. Job fairs now have the guys in green from Border Patrol. However, this is only good if you’re young and strong. It leaves all the middle-aged middle class office-workers, the ones you see being fired and crying or stating their intent to commit suicide on HBO’s reshow of Up In the Air this month.

And while you may not know dick about chemical or biological terrorism, unlike me — which doesn’t really matter anyway since observing reality isn’t part of the job description, there doesn’t seem to be any obstacle to a career in homeland security other than a college degree.

Related to Homeland Security jobs are solid conditions for “forensic accountants.”

Like Homeland Security workers, they’re an outgrowth of trouble — mostly of our own devise. There’s a law enforcement/justice demand for people to slowly wind their way through the government’s list of potential corporate and Wall Street crooks generated due to the economic collapse.

The systemic fraud in the home foreclosure predator business, as practiced by the same banks which brought on the economic calamity, guarantees this as a boom industry.

The tip of the iceberg is well-described here at Digby.

And, as noted previously here — regionally, the prospects are good for engineers who can get their feet in the door of the flying robot assassin business at General Atomics.

Today’s Los Angeles Times informs:

Indeed San Diego drone builder General Atomics Aeronatical Inc. will hold a job fair Saturday. It is hiring up to 60 engineers, technicians and machinists, a month.

Now that the fantasy of Hot Jobs has been dispensed with once again, a headline in yesterday’s LA Times Business section read: “Jobs remain a booming US export.”

“Though some American firms are bringing overseas work back home, evidence is growing that companies are moving more jobs than ever to China and other countries — a move that could exacerbate efforts to bring down the nation’s stubbornly high unemployment rate,” reports the newspaper.

“One sign of increased off-shoring is the rising number of applications for Federal Trade Adjustment Assistance which usually goes to factory workers who lost their jobs because their work was sent overseas or was undercut by cheaper imports … For the six months that ended Sept. 30, workers at about 1,200 offices and plants nationwide were approved for Federal Trade Adjustment Assistance.”

This is up 20 percent from the previous half-year, the newspaper reported.

“President Obama has complained the US tax system encourages companies to invest and hire abroad, but a bill that would have ended certain tax credits and deferrals to companies expanding or moving overseas was voted down in the Senate last week,” the newspaper concluded.

A Los Angeles Times business story on Small Business Administration-backed loans is here.

The very small beer about this has to do without it will be a boon for job creation because everyone is in dire need of access to capital.

How will that capital be spent?

The Times furnishes an interesting example:

Kent Peterson, who owns an engineering company in Long Beach with his twin brother, Kevin, said he has already swung into action on the remodel he is planning with his loan money.

Peterson had put off construction on his project to redo the offices of P2S Engineering as his loan — approved way back in the spring — languished while Congress bickered over the small-business-stimulus legislation.

“It’s going to be a fantastic space when we’re all done,” said Peterson, who plans to make his offices more energy efficient, install a gym and create new windows in the building. “We’re really looking forward to it.”

They are going to install a gym. It is, as we all know, of signal importance to always be your buffed-est.

And here is a handy chart which thoroughly kicks the ass of any expectations about “Hot Jobs” — except at General Atomics.

You may ask, “Why this focus on the dreadful US economy and prospects for the middle class, Dick?”

Well, mass unemployment leads to political instability, as we’ve seen.

Political instability is a serious threat to everyone’s security.

If you don’t address it satisfactorily, soon Victoria Jackson’s “There’s a Communist In the White House” has half a million views on YouTube, along with everything that suggests.

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