Would you get your hands (and lungs) dirty in a mine? ⛑️ How about spending your days hammering horseshoes…or people shoes? 👞🐴 Thanks to technology, some of the biggest jobs of yesteryear are only found in history books. 🪦
Wondering where your local blacksmith went? 🤔 In a recent Washington Post piece, researchers laid out all the data on which old-school jobs disappeared into thin air. Let’s dig into the highlights!
Here’s Five Fast Facts on careers throughout the years:
- 🌽 Green Acres - Fun fact: back in 1860, over 32% of free American workers either owned a farm or worked on one. Research shows that in most states, farming was the most common job. Now, it’s a much different story. Although the U.S. workforce grew 20x since 1860, farmers only make up 0.3% of it.
- 🔦 Miner Details - Mining was also a super-common job and at one point, iconically American (Alexa, play Billy Joel’s Allentown). In the past, mining made up roughly 2.5% of the workforce. Today, it’s dropped down to 0.1%.
- ⛏️ Irons In the Fire - In the mid-1800s, around 1.3% of the American workforce worked as blacksmiths. That’s about how many people work in the modern-day restaurant industry! However, by the 1980s, most smithing jobs went extinct like our dinosaur pals.
- 👠 Peach Cobbler - Is there a shoe doctor in the house? Cobblers (AKA shoemakers and shoe repair peeps) used to be everywhere. Although you can still find them, at one point there was one shoemaker out of every 50 workers. Once big shoe factories hit the scene, many local cobblers closed up shop.
- 🔁 Times A-Changing - Research shows that workers got pushed out of old-school jobs as the economy became more productive. New machinery and updated manufacturing and farming processes meant less manpower needed to get the job done. Workers either moved to big factory jobs or service-based jobs.
🔥Bottom line: Maybe you’re not exactly a blacksmith, but all the layoff news might have you in panic mode. Have you ever considered doomsday prepping your career? Sounds crazy, but it just might keep your paycheck safe. Head here to learn more about safeguarding your job.
What old job would you have done back in the day?
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