25 Once Booming Professions That Are Slowly Dying
What if you're toiling away in a career that has no future? That's the question these Redditors pondered. And here is the definitive list of...
Published 9 months ago in Wow
What if you're toiling away in a career that has no future?
That's the question these Redditors pondered. And here is the definitive list of 25 professions that are slowly (but surely) dying!
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Scientific glass blowing! I work in a lab that uses tons of custom glass parts for our sampling flasks and analysis racks, and anything that breaks needs to be repaired quickly and precisely! Young people go into glass blowing to make bongs and sculptures and chandeliers but never the technical stuff. All the scientific glassblowers in my area are 70+ with health issues and they can’t find apprentices. Crazy thing is that you can charge $15k for a cannabis film still and it’s only about $2k in raw glass parts, so there’s a huge untapped market out there. And shipping glass long distance is obviously risky so we need these guys localized and knowledgeable.3
Sewing machine technicians. The two older gents that service mine are amazing, been doing it most of their lives. They're lovely people and extraordinarily knowledgeable but they're wanting to retire and there's no one to take on their business. They've tried to find apprentices but no one is interested despite them being in pretty high demand. The precision engineering in my industrial and domestic machines is extraordinary and it makes me so sad that if they go wrong I might never find anyone to fix them.8
We are wildly short on truck drivers. The media is talking about it now, a little, but I learned the job a little over two years ago, and in training, we were shown a map of the US where we had more freight to move than drivers who could move it. The entire map was solid red, not a spec of white on it. The driver shortage predates Covid. The best I can figure is people: A) don't want to be gone all the time, B) Don't know you can drive locally and be home daily while still making good money, C) share in the negative stigma that exists around truckers these days, D) some combination of the above. But there is a growing shortage, and with drivers aging out and younger people not replacing them, the problem is set to get much worse. "Everything you own arrived on a truck," but what happens when no one is driving the trucks?11
Airline desk attendants who help you reschedule your missed flight. Some airlines now have mobile apps that let you book your own flight and even divert to a different airport. They'll show you which ones are available and your choice will immediately go into their computer system. And chances are if you have a basic knowledge of which airports are where and their transportation options, you'll do a better job than them.14
Believe it or not, carpet installers. Sure people still put carpet in, but a lot less. With the rise in popularity of things like LVT, and trends changing, people are remodeling or building new with less and less carpet. In a typical residential setting, you're lucky if the bedrooms have carpet. This means there is less work available overall, and what there is available is only small rooms. The installers are needed less, and they make less. This has been going on for a few years, and it's getting harder to get guys to come in and install the stuff.16
I used to be a hotel concierge. My knowledge of who to see and what to do in our city was replaced with the likes of Google Reviews and Trip Advisor. I remember a guest wanting to go somewhere to eat, I suggested an authentic place, which they turned down as “Yelp” rated it 3 stars. They opted to go to a 5 star one. I had never heard of it. Then came back to complain the restaurant was a £30 taxi each way, as it wasn’t in the city and the restaurant was actually a take-away. But Yelp knows better.20
Engineering drafting, I’ve seen my job change from drawing with pencils to becoming a full-time 3D modeling career. It’s not a bad thing since the job has changed and no one has lost work but it’s sad in the context that drafting is an art and the old school drafting before computers is absolutely beautiful.22
Journalist. That's not a sarcastic, edgy comment. They are legitimately being replaced by content creators. The advertisements don't even read 'Journalist' or 'Reporter' 60% of the time. The distinction is important too because the job of a Journalist is to report the truth, whereas a Content Creator simply matches a brief suited to the publication's biases, alignments, and interests.23
Land Surveyors. In my State (USA), there were stats put out a few years ago that there were about 2,600 licensed surveyors in the State and about 40% of those were above the age of 60. It’s an incredibly important field, but no one talks about it as a “career” when you’re in high school. Depending on which sector you get into, you can make the same amount as civil engineers would but with way more job security.