It depends on the job, and the technical requirements.
I'm an architect. I've been out of work for almost two years. I can find lots of advertisements for entry- and mid-level architects (which I'm not, but there are no openings for senior architects), but every architecture job I've seen requires the applicant to know Revit.
Revit is the next generation of CADD software after AutoCAD. I'm conversant with AutoCAD, albeit not fully up to speed on the latest 3-D aspects of it. But, if you can hum it, I can fake it. Revit is a whole different animal. A few months back I was chatting with a younger architect who is trying to build up his firm. His analysis: "I can teach anyone to use AutoCAD in a week. I can teach anyone to use Revit in a year."
So it has a steep learning curve. And it's not cheap -- I think an individual license for Revit costs something like $3,500 per year. They give it away to students, but to qualify you have to be enrolled in a college or university that assigns you an .EDU e-mail address.
The nature of technology is that businesses in the United States are eliminating jobs. People are being replaced by computers and robots.
That is the nature of technical progress everywhere, not just the US. I've spend 19 years working at my little piece of Maintenance in the Federal Government. I am very good at it. Last year my agency announced that we are divesting every platform that I work on. I'm still not sure what's going to happen. I've worked very hard (before I had to leave for deployment) to articulate to my command the value of the human capitol at my shop and how that value can be applied to the equipment they still have, and why it makes since not to close our shop, but they may yet close it.
If that happens, I suspect I will be in a position similar to Hawkmoon, in that while I'm by no means entry- or mid-level at what I do, I probably don't have the skills to jump right into a similar level job with another employer. I have several plans and back-up plans to hit the ground running if I end up out of work, but all require some version of identifying the training and skills an employer wants, and getting those skills. And, honestly, accepting that while I was pretty dang senior in the old job, coming into a new company and/or job is probably going to require coming in as a mid-level, with a short term loss in pay until I prove my worth. THat's a fact of life of living in a job market that has folks bouncing between companies and even industries during their working lifespan.
On the anecdotes in the article, I don't have a clear picture on their issues and background. I do however know several men in the rural south that are in this demographic. One has low-level mental issues and is enabled by his wife to hide in the house and play video games instead of develop useful coping skills, one worked entry level manual labor jobs his entire life until he hurt himself, and was (at about 51) old and beat up enough that no company would hire him for manual labor anymore. He finally got on disability when he was 57 (I think). One was a trucker for 20 years and got a DUI. No other skills to speak of, and no HS diploma. These folks are going to be hard to employ.
The guy on disability will give you a long discussion on age discrimination in hiring if you ask (hell, even if you hold still for 45 sec), but I gotta say I kinda understand. If I was the hiring manager at the Amazon hub, or the place that makes mobile homes, or the WalMart distribution hub (all places that declined to hire him) and I saw an early 50's applicant that already has a back injury looking for a job throwing boxes around or heaving lumber around, I would be thinking about the fact that I'm opening the company to a likely workers comp claim, and at best, he's not going to sling boxes like a 20 something.
Hawk, you certainly didn't ask for advice, but have you run the cost analysis on auditing 1 class a semester at the local JC for the .edu address, and spending 8 or 10 months getting good at the software in question? It might end up a good investment. That's one of my back-up plans; use (in my case) my low cost access to software through .mil availability to spend some real effort learning CAD and CAM so if I need to fall back on my fabrication skills, I'm a CNC operator, not a production welder.
In the end I'd agree again with Hawkmoon. Technology, and it's pace, is going to change the shape of the work force in everyone's life. For younger folks, probably a couple times. If you are a worker, you need to have the mental agility to try and see these changes coming, and at minimum shift gears and learn new skills as the world changes.
