In 1976 I got my first office job, part-time after school at a dress factory. My duties included operating the switchboard. Here we are less than 30 years later, and you probably don't know what a switchboard is.
It used to be that all phone calls to a place of business came into one location - the switchboard - and the operator then connected the call by plugging a wire into a hole in the board. I loved switchboard duty. It was a lot more fun than filing or typing. But alas, a glamorous career in switchboard operation was not in the cards for me. Advances in technology have made switchboard operator jobs obsolete.
Sometimes jobs cease to exist for other reasons. Discoveries in the world of medicine, combined with (or perhaps causing) a shift in socially-acceptable behavior, led to the disappearance of the job of spittoon polisher. It used to be common (WAY BEFORE MY TIME) to have container called a spittoon, often made of brass, in the lobby of a building into which people would spit. Somebody had to clean that out and polish it up every night. That is one job I don't think anyone was sad to see go away.
By the time some of you reach college, several jobs that exist today will be gone forever. But there will be at least one new job, if not many more, to replace those that are lost. Just look at all the careers that exist today due to the invention of the personal computer and the Internet, which were not even in the scope of my imagination when I was connecting calls the old-fashioned way back at the dress factory.
So don't let the news stories about disappearing jobs scare you. If you develop a good work ethic, keep your options open and never stop learning, you will have plenty of job opportunities no matter what the future brings.
You may even be the person who invents the "next big thing" that creates millions of new jobs. That would be awesome!
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