Where To Find a Blue-Collar Job in 2020

Richard Florida
(Senior Editor at The Atlantic and Director of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management.)
Feb 27, 2012

The United States is on track to generate 20 million jobs between 2010-2020, according to the latest projections from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But job creation will vary widely by type of job and also by metro region. The nation is projected to generate 7 million new high-wage, high-skill jobs for professional, technical, and creative workers, 10 million low-wage, low-skill service jobs, and 2.7 million new blue-collar jobs.
This week I'll be looking at where the jobs will be over the next decade. Based on an analysis by my colleague Charlotta Mellander, I'll map the changing distribution of the major types of jobs.
Today, we start with blue-collar jobs, which primarily make use of physical skill or manual labor. These include jobs in direct production as well as transportation, maintenance, and production.
Over the past several decades, the United States has seen a steady erosion of blue-collar work. Such jobs currently account for about 21 percent of all U.S. employment, a 2 percent dip since we last looked at the numbers in 2010.
But the BLS projects an additional 2.7 million new blue-collar jobs by 2020, spurred mainly by increases in construction and transportation.
The map below by Zara Matheson shows the projected growth in blue-collar, or working-class, jobs by metro area from 2010 to 2020.

Not surprisingly, the biggest metros top this list. Greater New York is (read more at http://m.theatlanticcities.com/jobs-and-economy/2012/02/where-find-blue-collar-job-2020/1255/ )