Job Security--An Oxymoron?

I scanned through an article last week that purported to assure young job seekers as to which trades and professions were likely to be secure in the coming work life. Several were in fields about which I claim no expertise as to their possible longevity. Two, however, stood out.
Teaching and medicine. Someone may tell me that what I know about these two fields is only true for Western Michigan. Somehow I doubt that. I know this—when you get established enough in the teaching profession to earn substantially more money than the starting wage, administrations will begin to move heaven and earth to get you to retire, replaced by someone much cheaper.
One teacher acquaintance of mine, who is eligible to retire—but his wife is seriously ill and needs to stay under the medical plan for the still employed, tells me that he barely steps out of his room without having the principal asking, “What can I do to convince you to retire?”
That’s not true security. A math/computer teacher I know (and really like) who is a true nerd—but knows how to teach his high schoolers to build competitive robots—just got bumped out of his job and considers himself fortune to be teaching math to first and second graders. (He, of course, bumped another teacher out of her job.)
School librarians have become a rarer species around here than Tyrannosaurus Rex. Some school libraries are closed permanently except for the occasional individual teacher who borrows the key and brings a class in for a specific project.
Others are still open but run by low-paid and untrained para-pros. I had a long talk with one such person—originally hired to tend challenged kids with physical needs. She said, “I can check out books and reshelve them, but I know nothing of ordering them or directing a student to what resources he might need.” Many high school libraries around here run this way.
I talked to the professional librarian who still runs our district’s high school library last night. She also maintains much of the computer systems throughout the school, so she’s busy and useful. She seriously doesn’t think she’ll have that job next year.
They’ll put in a much cheaper para-professional and let her bump some other English major out of a job. She has enough seniority that she’ll survive, but she LIKES being a librarian. She has a graduate degree in library science. You know and I know the next cuts will be teachers.
If you want to talk about the proverbial cloud “no bigger than a man’s hand”, what happens when some of these districts figure out that a computer on every desk with lessons taught on line might just be cheaper than paying all those salaries and benefits?
Tale about the joys of being a buggy whip maker! If I can think that thought (already some courses are being taught on line), so can the people who write the cheques and select the curricula. This may happen all that many years from now.
Let’s take a quick look at the medical business. In Muskegon and Grand Rapids, the two major hospitals in both cities have consolidated in the past few years. (Consolidation often means two people vying for one job. It has around here! Of course, one leaves.) In both cases the hospitals were in financial trouble—and consolidation kept them open. All of which suggests that maybe—health care reform or no—this country cannot afford as many health care professionals. (Watch what’s happening in the once untouchable auto industry.)
The only house around here that I am aware of being sold because of job loss belonged to a young, competent health care professional. He was a physical therapist. They didn’t fire him; they just cut his hours back and back … and back. (That also means no benefits.)
A lot of people who made and tended horse carriages a little over a century ago thought their jobs were secure too. So did American shoe makers and TV manufacturers. My unhappy thought is, NOTHING out there is secure. Too much change, too little money.