Automation and Relocations Overseas Means a New Employment Mix Will Take Hold

Wall Street Journal:

About a quarter of the 8.4 million jobs eliminated since the recession began won’t be coming back and will ultimately need to be replaced by other types of work in growing industries, according to economists in the latest Wall Street Journal forecasting survey.

While the job market is constantly shifting as some sectors fade and others expand, this recession threw that process into overdrive. Thousands of workers lost jobs as companies automated more tasks or moved whole assembly lines to places like China. As growth returns, so will job creation—just with a different emphasis in the mix of jobs being created.

Economists in the survey are predicting a slow upswing for the economy as a whole. Respondents on average expect economic growth to settle at about 3% in 2010, off sharply from the powerful 5.7% seasonally adjusted annual growth rate in the fourth quarter.

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