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Helpless is a word you hear a lot these days, especially from the white-collar unemployed. Their skills are not valued any more.
The job cuts in financial services and beyond are looking increasingly permanent rather than part of the natural cycle of economic contraction and expansion.
Services which once required educated people sitting in offices in central London, from accounting to architecture to legal contracts, can now be done at one-tenth the cost on the other side of the world.
Recent university graduates, who were told at every step of their life that success required a bachelor's degree, are finding they have nothing but a certificate and debt to show for it.
Technology, cheap foreign labour and the economic collapse are rendering a highly educated class of professional worker helpless.
It is the same in the United States, where millions of white-collar jobs have been slashed recently which may never come back.
And as the months roll by, more and people are asking themselves the question: what is it I actually do?
It is not something a plumber or carpenter or car mechanic ever has to ask. These are jobs with a clearly defined purpose which cannot be shipped overseas, whose practitioners control the entire process from start to finish.
And they are being eyed with increasing interest by a group of people who for the past 30 years at least have regarded such trades as beneath them.
A new book, Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work by Matt Crawford, a philosopher turned motorcycle repairman, has become the focus of this debate.
Crawford completed a doctorate in philosophy at the University of Chicago, then went to work for a think tank in Washington DC.
The cubicle life killed him. "I was always tired and honestly could not see the rationale for my being paid at all," he writes. So he moved down to Virginia and began repairing motorcycles, a skill he had learned as a teenager in California.
His book is a paean to his kind of work and an assault on the dispiriting professional work that people with his kind of education are expected to do.
He argues that the professional classes have undergone the same transformation the manufacturing classes underwent in the early 20th century.
Instead of controlling an entire process, they are trained to do ever tinier slivers of work, which then become part of a much larger process. They are required by employers to become members of teams.
The problem, of course, is if you lose your place in the process or the team. You're then nothing more than the stray piece of Lego on the bedroom floor, meaningless unless part of the whole.
You are an investment banker without an investment bank. A corporate lawyer with no practice. An independent consultant scratching at the door of the industry you once worked in.
The plumber, by contrast, can always hang out his shingle and fix leaks with no one else to help. And even better for the plumber, it seems that nowadays there are more people offering to build a financial model or provide strategic brand advice than mend a burst pipe.
Manpower, the global staffing firm, recently conducted a survey among employers around the world and found that the toughest jobs to fill these days, for want of qualified employees, were skilled manual trades such as electricians, bricklayers, carpenters, plumbers and masons.
The United States Department of Labor estimates that jobs in skilled manual trades will grow at twice the rate of white-collar jobs over the next five years.
As governments around the world invest in green technology, people with established blue-collar skills and mechanical and electrical aptitude will benefit more from this new industry than those with white-collar skills.
A popular new website, bluecollarandproudofit.com, with the slogan "Success Outside the Cubicle", draws visitors with stories of personal fulfilment and financial success from mechanics, gardeners and welders - people who never bothered with the time and expense of a university education but started work young, became good at something which cannot be outsourced, have control over their time and do not depend on a single employer for their salary.
Their choice has even been validated by some of America's best-known economists.
One of them, Alan Blinder of Princeton University, wrote the bumper sticker for this white-collar to blue-collar revolution: "You can't hammer a nail over the internet."
In an analysis of the drift of jobs to low-wage markets, he wrote: "One clear implication of the upward march of technology is that a widening array of services will become deliverable electronically from afar.
And it's not just low-skill services such as key punching, transcription and telemarketing. It's also high-skill services such as radiology, architecture and engineering - maybe even college teaching."
In this context, all those degrees young people in first world countries are still told to acquire become worthless, as the jobs they qualify you for become economically unsustainable.
If you have the choice, then become a barrister whose presence is required in court, not a solicitor, whose contract work can be done for less overseas and transmitted through the ether.
Don't become an architect, a drafter of plans, become a builder. Be a paediatrician, who must see children, rather than a radiologist, whose x-rays might be interpreted more cheaply overseas.
And for the good of your soul, Crawford suggests, find work with a discernible product or result that you can measure for yourself. Does the car start or the pipe leak?
Avoid anything where your work is diluted into the collective effort of a team or where your self-esteem depends on someone else's opinion. You cease, then, to be a professional and become a clerk, one who is always replaceable.
Skip brand management and run at the first mention of "implementing an initiative". Instead find work which offers practical wisdom which you can use whatever the state of the economy.
But this is not to romanticise blue-collar work. It may be just as hard and will certainly be more dirty than sitting in an office.
As the economy changes, though, it could be the best thing you can do for your wallet.
Reader views (14)
Honestly the problem is that plumbers like my self have been denied a chance to apply for the same jobs online yet we have the skills. I think at least the UK government should consider the non-UK citizens for the various jobs because we have the potential.
- Kalyango Denis, KAMPALA
Another good article PDB. YOu really do hate the corporate world don't you? Well I can sympathise to an extent. I work for a lge bank in Australia as an investment accountant and the degree of specialisation in my job means that I COULD NOT perform my role for a much smaller firm. I simply am not equipped with the necessary skills. And neither are any of my much more experienced colleagues who cannot explain why things are done as they are.
Tradies here in Australia have been well positioned to benefit from the recent mining boom. In fact those without any skills could find themselves cleaning toilets in the outback for up to $100k/yr. A bit frustrating when you go to the trouble of getting a degree then more postgrad qualifications and you're no better off.
- Justin, Melbourne, Australia
What a surprise I learned years ago that a computer never ever put a toolbag on its back and went out and did a job.
The politico,s and pen pushers dont seem to understand or want to understand what keeps the infrastructure of a country
going.
I am sick to death of hearing the expression of after a hard day at the office.
A country thrives on tangible production thats how we built this country up.
The non productives in my opinion are little more than parasites who bloodsuck off the rest.
If you want examples look no further than politicians,bankers,stock market manipulators and the myriad
of others whose sole aim in life is to make a fast buck at the expense of the long suffering public.
The lot who are in now are a marxist/social engineering/pc oriented bunch of discredited chancers who are blundering from crisis to crisis in the hope of survival.
The Primementalist/Meddlesome are history come the next election and they know it.
Roll on the next election when we will be rid of this ragbag and maybe just maybe start putting this country back to were it belongs.
- Crom, Wigan,England
Quote: Fluke, London U.K.
Trade jobs may not be able to be exported to other parts of the World for a cheaper rate .........but "other parts" of the World can come here to do them.
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And they have done so for Century’s, Fluke,
The Irish built most of England’s roads, canals, railways, buildings, and sewers, etc.
There is always work; for those that can do an honest day’s hard graft for an honest days pay.
- Mickinlondon, london.
Trade jobs may not be able to be exported to other parts of the World for a cheaper rate .........but "other parts" of the World can come here to do them
- Fluke, London U.K.
I can still wipe a lead joint, we learned a lot when I was a kid; and at 67 I can still find work if I need it today, not only in Plumbing, but Electrical installations as well, plus I can strip any engine down; rebore it and rebuild it etc, I can also fillet any kind of fish; yes even a spratt, and I did Kosher butchery as well, I am a first class decorator as well; something else I learned in my busy youth.
So what you may ask; well I don’t need anyone to do anything for me, and it saves me a fortune paying others etc; who cares about white collar jobs going abroad, blue collar jobs went the same way long ago etc.
The truth is; we are far to fat and lazy now, highly over-paid for what we do, and far too greedy etc.
Remember Maggie and Norman Tebbit; nobody owes you a living; so get on your bikes ok; and stop whinging.
- Mickinlondon, london.
The time to make money as a tradie was in the 1980's. The hourly rate for a carpenter is £12.50 ph, which has only gone up 50p since 2002. There has been virtually no work around for a YEAR, and it is no good encouraging youngsters to take up a trade, cos all the jobs are going to the europeans, who will do it for next to nothing anyway. Trades are dying in this country because there is very little work opportunity and no money in them anymore, plus, according to another newspaper, there are 150 people competing for each job. If you think tradies are rolling in it, tell me, what carpenter do you see driving around in a porsche? The porsche driver is likely to be the person who hires him to to the job and then moans cos he has to pay the chippie a living wage for dragging his tools across London, after a 2-hour drive from his home in an unfashionable suburb!
- Bob, london
A whole generation, starting in the 60's, were taught to despise the useful jobs their parents did, breeding a new lumpen-graduate 'class', who have tried to entrench their privilege based on status rather than talent. We even reached the contemptible stage where the police offered accelerated promotion for graduates, which must have done wonders for the morale of those who worked their way up by hard work and worth. The end result was bureaucrats in blue, subservient to the political class, who themselves come out of this inbred group, without life experience.The penny is finally dropping that you can't run an economy based on social aspiration: brains are needed in every corner of the economy, or sooner or later nothing works: look at the generation of buildings designed on computers by architects who have never measured a piece of wood, who blame the engineer when their 'iconic' bridge wobbles, but take the credit when the engineer fixes it.
I suppose one should feel sorry for those who have bought into this con, but it's not easy.
- Mdj E10, london uk
Phew thank god it's only a legal dispute, I'll call the solicitor. I thought we needed a plumber, that would be scary......
- Paul, The Wells, Kent
The man in the picture looks like Gideon. Long neck and slopey shoulders. I think he's trying to look seductive but its really, really not working - ugh put it away Gideon
- Ls, Twickenham
You don't need to be educated to sit in an office and earn money - witness for example estate agents. It saddens me that the government is herding young people into university, and substantial debt with the promise that a degree leads to some sort of utopian lifestyle, which is clearly false. Vocational qualifications and apprenticeships are fantastic opportunities, but undervalued which is something the government needs to address urgently.
- Steve, Herefrod
Interesting but too pessimistic an article. White collar work will re-appear. What is wrong is the dearth of criminal or civil prosecutions of bankers and financiers who have de-frauded the taxpayer by risking our money for their personal huge rewards. Taxpayers need to become increasingly vocal to ensure culpable bankers are brought to court starting with board directors.
- Jim, London
I suspect the man in the picture is not a real plumber. I think he might be in the private film industry. or perhaps he is some kind of kissagram.
- Squiz, Islington
yeh right; let's all become plumbers - leave me out!
- Jules_London, london
