Unsolicited Career Advice for the Student No. 7. The perils of occupational predictions.

In spite of the title here, I'm not sure that this is really "career advice", so much as it is commentary and the recommendation to be cautious.

This post comes about due to the receent article in the Wyoming Lawyer about the Board of Law Examiners abondoning the Wyoming CLE requirement.  While I agree that the CLE was absurd, the BLE seems to be on the railroad track leading to the oblivion of local practice on this one.  This sort of "we have to do this as we have to do this" sort of process is really common.  People, once committed to a certain course of action, tend to stay that through even if it was never a good idea.  Quitting some things, quite frankly, is a good idea. And if the destionation is lousy, why go there. Get off the train somewhere else.

It's also prompted by having read some of the occasional commentary put out by local economic entites to the effect of "this brings in jobs".  I've also commented on that locally.  It amazes me the extent to which the "jobs" argument is so poorly analyzed.

Both of the factors mentioned above are important if you are starting out planning your career.  A couple of important trends seem to come to light when you do, which are:

1.  Technology is on the brink of premanently wiping out a lot of "good jobs'.

2.  The mega-urbanization of our economy has premanently exported jobs from towns and cities to big cities.

3.  Some professions that formerly had small town expression have permanently moved to mid sized cities where the professionals must have signficant infrastructure investment.

4.  With at least one profession, the law, the operation of technology and short sighted bar admisison policies will kill off the practice in rural areas.