Where New Work Comes From: teacher key

Jobs and Careers, grade 10 edition, written for 10th grade. New kinds of jobs appear while old ones shrink. See how government data count work, what it takes to train for different jobs, and which jobs are projected to grow or fall by 2035.

Read the book. Print this page for the key.

Questions and answers

1. Which jobs did researchers say tended to get automated from about 1940 to 1980?
   • Civil engineer and buyer
   • Shipping clerk and aeronautical engineer
   • Elevator operator and typesetter (answer)
2. Why can a shrinking job still have many openings?
   • Workers who move on or leave must be replaced (answer)
   • Shrinking jobs always grow the next year
   • Openings are counted from unemployment insurance claims
3. What does BLS say about the effects of AI on employment?
   • They are certain and large
   • They are highly uncertain (answer)
   • They are exactly zero
4. Why does a fast-growing job not always add many jobs?
   • Growth rates never apply to small jobs
   • BLS only counts large jobs in its lists
   • A small job can grow fast but add few jobs (answer)
5. What does tenure mean in the BLS survey of workers?
   • Time a worker has spent with one employer (answer)
   • How much money a worker earns each year
   • The subject a worker studied in school
6. What counts as employed in the monthly survey?
   • Only full-time paid work done during the survey week
   • Any paid work in the survey week, even part-time (answer)
   • Only paid work that goes on for the whole year long

Words

• apprenticeship: learning by working
• median: middle value
• tenure: time with employer
• automated: done by machines
• employer: who employs you
• unemployed: jobless