Jobs That Are Disappearing in the New Economy

With more than 7 million job openings currently available in the United States, it can be hard to believe that a considerable number of those jobs may become obsolete within the next decade. As technology continues to advance, machines are becoming increasingly able to perform tasks that were once only possible for humans to perform. Because of this, the new economy is beginning to see certain jobs disappear as they are increasingly outsourced to computers. Here are a few examples of jobs that are vanishing from the career marketplace.

Telephone Operator

Once upon a time, way back in the 20th century, people required the assistance of a telephone operator to connect to other people over a phone line. Seated at a switchboard, the telephone operator was responsible for connecting hundreds of calls per day for people across the country, and even overseas. Everyone who was alive during the 1900s can remember a time when all you had to do was dial "0" and an operator would assist you. Nowadays, however, with the rise of phone automation and virtual receptionists, the need for an operator is all but obsolete. You can now use AI assistants like Siri to help you make a hands-free call, and most businesses answer their phone calls automatically with a computerized system that routes calls to the appropriate extensions. Phone operators currently still exist, but their employment is expected to decrease by over 22 percent by 2026.

Front Desk Receptionist

As we mentioned above, fewer and fewer modern businesses are employing a human being to answer the phone, and are instead investing in automated phone answering systems. Additionally, other tasks that were once associated with the position of front desk receptionist are also getting automated upgrades, virtually eliminating the need for an actual person at the front desk altogether. Gone already are the receptionists sitting at the front desk with their bulk earbuds in. High tech solutions like visitor management systems are allowing businesses to save money by letting a robot handle the flow of in-office traffic. Not only that, but since more and more companies are ditching the office altogether in favor of a remote workplace that allows employees greater flexibility and a good work-life balance, there's less of a need for a person to physically be sitting at a front desk.

Typists

Just about every episode of Mad Men features 1960s-era typists. These office workers, mainly women, earned a living typing out memos, letters, and other documents at a furious pace on clunky, old-timey typewriters. However, now that we all carry around laptops, tablets, and other mobile devices all day long, we no longer need anyone to transcribe handwritten notes into typed text: we're all just doing our own typing, all the time. In fact, with talk-to-text features available on most computing devices, we can even dictate a message or email and have our devices carry out the transcription for us in real time! This is bad news for the remaining few typists out there, but excellent news for business owners on a budget.

No matter how many jobs vanish due to the march of technological progress, the human factor will always be a necessary and welcome part of business. Though we no longer have need for some jobs that can be performed by automated systems, we still rely on human brain power to help make those systems work, fix them when they're offline, and continue developing them as they grow ever more powerful. While it's true that some jobs are going the way of VHS tape, humans will always be an essential part of the most important aspects of business.