I'm rather surprised to see Software Developer as the most common job in any state. I wonder what they consider to be software development. If you are a not an actual programmer but you work at a company who's only product is software, and you contribute to that product in ways other than writing code -- perhaps as a copywriter for e-learning software, or a graphic designer for a web app -- are they counting you as a software developer? Because while the software development industry is certainly very large now, the number of people actually writing code is not large enough in my experience to be the most common job anywhere.
As interesting and insightful as this is, I'm very curious about how much the chosen level of categorisation affects the final result. For example, I notice that "registered nurse" and "nursing aide" are considered separate professions. That may well be valid (I assume it's to do with level of training and responsibility? I just picked the example because the jobs sound like they're similar, I'm not picking on nursing in particular.) but if you were to combine them, would they suddenly become the most common job in additional states? And presumably every job could be further subdivided (There are few "secretaries" remaining in part because of technological advances but also because that job has been somewhat rebranded into a bunch of more specific titles.), so where you draw that line might have a big impact on the ranking. Without visualising actual percentages (and/or maybe showing multiple jobs that rank highly), they're really limiting how much this map is telling us.
Two figures which stand out for me are:<p>(1) The disappearance of factory jobs (machine operator, assembler of electrical equipment). The overseas flight of US manufacturing as a consequence of free trade agreements is real; the causes, consequences, and whether it's good or bad is a topic for another post.<p>(2) How common truck drivers are. I realized some years ago that it's one of the few jobs left that lets people earn a decent income without much education. Also, the job is a prime candidate to be replaced by automation (self driving vehicles) and the economic displacement of all sorts of driving jobs could possibly lead to social/political turmoil.
The most common jobs in the Northeastern states seem to shift toward people jobs: nurse, nursing aide, primary school teacher. These involves complex tasks requiring tight coordination between motor, natural language, and emotional skills. Thus they are unlikely to be replaceable by technologies in the near future. (From my knowledge of AI, these sets of skills are probably even harder to automate than those of software developers.)<p>Nursing and healthcare jobs in particular will clearly be in higher demand with aging population in all developed countries (and several developing ones).<p>Many of these jobs require moderate formal education and average cognitive skills, but also a certain set of aptitude (e.g., empathy, communication, cooperation) best inculcated at home and in one's culture. If more analysis shows that they are indeed the most available jobs in the future, perhaps we should start preparing the youths now (especially since these skills are themselves valuable in life and in most other careers).
This info graphic shows more the specialization of the workforce, or at least of titles, between 1978 and 2014. I'm ready to bet there's almost the same percentage of truck drivers in 1978 compared to today, it's just that people who would have been 'just' secretaries have split into marketing assistants, HR workers, accounts receivable, sales people, etc, and the total number of white collar workers hasn't changed that much. However, a truck driver is a truck driver is a truck driver, let it be a dump truck, a big rig, a van or whatever.<p>Sucks for farmers, tho.
Don't take away my pinch-zoom, and especially not when you've sized the page so that I can't see the date and the mal at the same time.<p>Honestly, I wish there was a way to tell Android Chrome to ignore the html tag that blocks zooming - using it is a moronic act of hubris and it frustrates me every time.
It'd be much more interesting and honest to link the original content that provides context: <a href="http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/05/382664837/map-the-most-common-job-in-every-state" rel="nofollow">http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/05/382664837/map-t...</a>
What is by far the most interesting is that software developer is becomming the most common job. So if in 30 years secretaries was replaced with smart phones and word processing software, soon truck drivers will be replaced by self driving cars, then in 30 years (probably less) what will software developers (then maybe the most common job) be replaced with?
So, my takeaway is that if the transportation is automated, our country will have a "Few problems" with regards to unemployment, taxation, and human welfare.<p>If? Make that when.<p>So, the next question, considering all the companies entering in this landscape: How do we change our country to handle a mass forced exodus into unemployment? What do we do with 5 million unemployed?<p>Worse yet, what do we do when we are looking at 50% unemployable? (Not unemployed, unemployable. As in work done at free != absolute lowest cost of food/shelter) And when that number climbs, where do we go? What do we do?
So "computer analyst" replaces Truck Driver in 2002 in Colorado, and then goes back to Truck Driver in 2004? Presumably this is census data, I see is the <a href="https://cps.ipums.org/cps/" rel="nofollow">https://cps.ipums.org/cps/</a> IPUMS data set.<p>I'd be interested in figuring out ways to cross check that set. On the surface it looks like self driving trucks would throw most of the country out of work.
Truck drivers, huh? Well, I'm sure there's a convenient free-market solution for all of these people losing their jobs in the next 10 years to self-driving vehicles. Maybe 'automated truck refueling technician'?
On a meta level, this is probably a good example to study for the impact of grouping data into classes (most likely the truck driver is just a job that is more easily groupable than the different types of office jobs etc).
This image is interesting but lacks any context (including what the asterisk is for which is what initially bugged me) so I searched and found the actual story which has the graphic and explains what it means including that the asterisks indicates: "We used data from the Census Bureau, which has two catch-all categories: "managers not elsewhere classified" and "salespersons not elsewhere classified." Because those categories are broad and vague to the point of meaninglessness, we excluded them from our map." <a href="http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/05/382664837/map-the-most-common-job-in-every-state" rel="nofollow">http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/05/382664837/map-t...</a>
The article that the submitted interactive map is part of [1] explains some of the things that people are speculating about here.<p>An important note: they are using Census Bureau data and categories. The CB has two broad categories, "managers not elsewhere classified" and "salespersons not elsewhere classified". They map makers left those out because they consider them broad and vague to the point of meaninglessness.<p>• There are so many truck drivers for a few reasons. One is that it is much less affected by globalization and automation (so far) than most other jobs, and another is that the "Truck Driver" is a very broad category in the CB data. It includes delivery drivers, for instance. Some other large jobs are split across more than one category. Teacher, for example, has separate CB categories for primary school teacher and secondary school teacher.<p>• Secretary rose in the '80s as the economy shifted away from factory work and toward office work. Then the personal computer took away more and more of the work that secretaries did, so Secretary fell.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/05/382664837/map-the-most-common-job-in-every-state" rel="nofollow">http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/05/382664837/map-t...</a>
This reminded me of the "Humans need not apply" video, which I strongly recommend, if you haven't already seen it: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU</a><p>Discussion:
<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8172461" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8172461</a>
Statistics based on classification systems are <i>entirely</i> ontological artefacts -- how many of X you have (or how many X you have) depends entirely on how you subdivide space.<p>In an earlier look at this story, I went through a set of occupational categorisation and census data dating back to the 19th century. As might be expected, there's been a tendency for the total number of occupational classifications to increase over time.<p>As might <i>not</i> be expected, the high-water mark of classifications <i>isn't</i> the present, but the classification scheme used for 1910 - 1920 census data.<p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/3832wx/occupation_classifications_growth_and_change_over/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/3832wx/occupat...</a><p>My favourite of all the occupations comes from the 1880 classification: #309, "Gentleman".
If truck driver is a most common job then the future looks pretty bleak. There are billions of dollars behind making driving any and all vehicles obsolete.<p>I wonder if people know that Google, Amazon, Tesla and even Apple are hard at work at killing their jobs!<p>Don't get me wrong, driver-less future is a nice future! But a lot of people may get caught off guard.
These don't actually reflect the nation-wide distribution, which is heavy on retail salespeople, cashiers, and cooks.<p><a href="http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/ocwage.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/ocwage.pdf</a>
So of course the conclusion is that the people of Florida care deeply about education because there are so many school teachers.<p>It's strange that data this useless is published/publicized, it's almost a honey pot for idle, unscientific speculation.
This is quite likely an example, from a data modelling point of view, of an extremely slowly changing dimension driven by historical regulations, laws, and taxonomies.<p>It may still be meaningful for a few industries, but not in general.