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Management.

Especially middle-management; it's an incredibly hard job to keep the people both above and below you happy, but if you are good at it you will never be out of work.

Middle management also has fairly regular turn over if I'm not mistaken as the peter principle hits the hardest there. Opportunities to rise will present themselves reliably.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Im not sure "Lying on your back" Is that hard of a skill

Oh, there is a lot more to it than that. A lot more.

With trades, it is hard to say what is best for the "future". Trade Skills are a commodity and therefore highly subject to supply and demand. From 2007 to 2013 you couldn't get a job as a Plumber, Electrician, Construction worker type. Now, however it is boom time again.

Therefore, pick a trade you like doing and do it. Just be prepared to retrain as the average American changes CAREERS (Not Jobs) 7 or so times in their lifetime.

 Ouze wrote:
If I could do it over again, I would either go into plumbing, or I'd have doubled down on 3D modelling, something I only dabbled in.

The mechanical pipe trades are an awesome field to be in. Plumbing is a decent way to make a living but the mechanical piping side is more diverse and offers more opportunities.

I did plumbing for about a year and I didn't like it. I started my apprenticeship in a combination local union (Local 525 in Las Vegas, NV that has both plumbers and pipefitters/steamfitters) before moving to a steamfitters-only local (Local 602 in Washington, DC) and it was the best thing I ever did.

A couple people have mention welding and I highly recommend it, especially pipe welding which is the among the most difficult to do. Gathering as many certifications as possible for all the different welding techniques is one of the easiest ways to stay gainfully employed (especially if you like to travel) because skilled welders are always in demand. Pipe joining technology is advancing rapidly, which is a good thing, but there are still things that have to be welded and the pool of skilled welders is diminishing extremely fast. Be warned though, welding looks like it's fun and "glamorous" but it can be miserable work, albeit very well paying miserable work.

I would of thought those sort of trades were dying / dead in america? I mean the likes of metal fabrication, welding, boily, fitter etc...

bodazoka wrote:
I would of thought those sort of trades were dying / dead in america? I mean the likes of metal fabrication, welding, boily, fitter etc...

The workforce is dying but not the trades themselves.

Like always, there have been trends in work, but there is still a need for office buildings, power stations, hospitals, housing, and other infrastructure to be built and more importantly maintained. The biggest problem is that there isn't enough new workers to replace the ones exiting from the workforce and it's been like that for a long time.

which is why they get paid pretty well, if the fields get saturated, well pay goes down.

Personally, I've found Law Enforcement/Security to be a field which is never going to be taken over by computers, always looking for people, pay alright (- low level security), and most still come with pension plans (if that is of any interest to you)

 Comrade wrote:
which is why they get paid pretty well, if the fields get saturated, well pay goes down.

Personally, I've found Law Enforcement/Security to be a field which is never going to be taken over by computers, always looking for people, pay alright (- low level security), and most still come with pension plans (if that is of any interest to you)

Never taken over?

 Comrade wrote:
which is why they get paid pretty well, if the fields get saturated, well pay goes down.

Not exactly.

Construction tradesmen are not the same as unskilled laborers and they are paid for their training, not because there isn't that many of them. Just because there is always a demand for skilled tradesmen doesn't mean there aren't already lots of them working.

Personally, I've found Law Enforcement/Security to be a field which is never going to be taken over by computers, always looking for people, pay alright (- low level security), and most still come with pension plans (if that is of any interest to you)

Law enforcement jobs are always available because of the high turnover rate, which is a real problem for most agencies considering the amount of money the spend on recruiting and training.

Pfft Plumbers, Sparkies and plasterers are common as muck how about.....

Gamekeeper, I met a guy made some good bank shooting deer on a golf course. Apart from the cash he also got to keep the deer and rare for the UK, own guns. Obviously he had other responsibility's as well.

Ironworking is fun ... (Not sure what they call it in the rest of the world) I get to work outdoors. I work at great heights (805 foot without being able to tie off is my personal record) put together the office buildings or commercial buildings that other poor sods have to go to every day after I am done. You get a certification for welding that you can take across United States. If my foreman pisses me off ... I tell him what an idiot he is using many 4 letter words and this is accepted. If he does get mad he can fire me ( has not happened yet ) and I will have a new job the next day ... best part time job I have ever had.

Surgical Tech
Movement Coordinator/Traffic management
Aircraft/Powerplant License
Aircraft Structural mechanic
Heavy wheel mechanic (hydralic focus)
welding already mention
Train Engineer
Surgical Instruments Rep

"Helper" positions in USAjobs is a major plus for you if you can get into it.

To even be a better prospect you need to have a clear credit report and if can a "Secret" security clearance if aiming for a gov't job

ACAP open my mind to many possibilities on what I thought I can do to what I can "bleed" into.

I can throw many out but I/we need to know where your interest lies. Robotic field covers a wide range of sub fields.

Firearm and safe repair.

Is train engineer a driver? I think drivers will get replaced by automatic systems in the next generation. Any job that can be automated is in danger.

3D artist and also programmer jobs are increasingly being outsourced to places like India and Russia.

I think the intellectual occupations that have to remain local include medicine, the law, teaching and other fields in which personal contact and cultural familiarity are important.

Similarly, manufacturing or skilled trade type of jobs cannot be exported if they are to do with building and maintaining stuff here and now.

No-one is ever going to send their gas boiler to India to be repaired, for instance, although the Indians may become major manufacturers of gas boilers.

I suggested Robot repairman, but depending on your definition of trade or if you just want general job ideas consider Social Work. It's currently being squeezed by government cuts, but with an aging population and an increase in understanding and awareness of a variety of mental and physical conditions that require people to engage with additional support it's a fast growing field.

 J.Black wrote:
Management.

Especially middle-management; it's an incredibly hard job to keep the people both above and below you happy, but if you are good at it you will never be out of work.

I suspect that this is probably atypical, but at my job, whenever we have layoffs they always sack middle management first. When the GFC happened the first thing they did was fire a bunch of midlevel managers.

Zond wrote:
I suggested Robot repairman

Which reminds me. My wife worked for the US Post Office for a long time; and they always are short on the people who repair the machines, every location, forever. I believe they are called Area Maintenance Technicians and can do a wide variety of repairs and installs. It's a sort of niche skill but it's got strong demand, fairly high pay (starts at like $26/hr), not physically arduous, difficult to get fired from, and comes with a pension.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Sorry, Alot on Dakka like to Bash people who go to college for anything other then what they consider "Good Degrees" and I thought that is what you where doing.

Going to college, in and of itself, is a crappy way to get the skills you need to find a good job. Damn near anybody literate and punctual and graduate college, so a BA basically means you can read and show up most of the time.

If your goal is employment, college can help if you select coursework that focuses on career skills. Plenty of the skills I picked up in my BA (philosophy, king of the useless degrees) have been useful, but none helped me get a job. I'm glad I have the ability to read, analyze, critique, and argue a point. I'm glad I understand basic logic. But from a "how to get and work a job" standpoint, I didn't get much out of my undergraduate schooling. Law school was a little better, although a year too long for my tastes.