Is Your Industry At Risk?
Everyone of us is affected by changes in the business world. Even if you are in a stable job right now, the world is changing around you.
Maybe you or someone in your family have already been affected by a business or factory closing or moving over-seas.
A recent Wall Street Journal article listed the top ten dying industries in the USA. These were identified by their drop in revenue and by the drop in the number of companies that remain alive in that business.
Those who work or are involved in the arenas described below have to be worrying about their job security and their families’ financial status…
- Wired telecommunications: (hard-line telephones) Cell phones and persistently high fixed costs have doomed the hard-line telephone companies. The ones surviving are buying cell companies and re-arranging their business model. (See AT&T)
Phone from my younger days
- Mills- Where I live two local carpet mills at one time employed about 1500 people. They are now down to 150 in the one remaining plant and it has been shrinking rapidly-who knows when it will close….
- Newspaper publishing: I am a dinosaur in that I enjoy reading a ‘paper’ newspaper. But I’m gradually getting used to online reading. Once my generation is dead and buried we will take the newspaper business with us.
- Clothes manufacturing: Asia has taken over the clothes manufacturing business except for specialty items.
- Video rentals-Blockbuster is closing stores left and right. Netflix/movies on demand is just so easy. Online movie streaming will just get cheaper and cheaper as bandwidths improve.
- Manufactured Homes: We call ‘em trailers…Banks don’t like them as they are a depreciating asset (dropping in value)…But, so have stick built homes over the past 4 years…..hmmm
- Video post production services-With a good computer and cheap software, you can edit video yourself-Mr Spielberg….
- Record stores-Record stores-what’s a record? Who wrote this-someone older than me?
- Photofinishing stores-Digital photography and editing is easy with an iPad and a cell phone with double digit mega-pixils…
- Formal wear/costume stores-When did you get invited to the Oscars or Grammys? After the prom and wedding-most of us have no need for formal clothing. Those that do can usually afford whatever they need. Men’s Warehouse still makes a killing on Tux rental and because of their volume and margins they’ve run the mom and pop store out of business. And with cheap commercial rents-the costume stores pop up for Halloween and then close.
It’s interesting to see the variations in these industries and how long they lasted. Record stores, photography stores, mobile homes and the wired telephone companies lasted a century or less…
The newspaper business, and textile mills have been around for a couple of centuries-and will probably be around in some fashion for a little longer, but not in the dominant fashion of past years….
I wonder when Docs and Nurses will go out of business? I think health-care will soon be undergoing a similar consolidation. There is not enough money to pay for all the redundancy in our system. We will be seeing those changes occur in the next 10 years as we deal with Obama-care.
Comments and Questions:
How ’bout your field? Is your job in any danger of the techno-times passing you by. Technology itself is here today and gone tomorrow, ask Xerox and Kodak. My Space became 2nd fiddle to Facebook in just a few years.
Facebook eating My Space???
Another reason to pay close attention to your finances and continue your efforts towards financial freedom!
(photo credits: ivan walsh and julien lozelli c.c.)
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Tags: businesses in decline, declining industries, industries dying, job losses
This recession is affecting government jobs and generally recession proof professions such as teachers. Worst yet, this could be a jobless recovery. The effects could go on for years
No doubt re government jobs-they were the last to get hit, but will be hit hard over the next coupla years, while the rest of the workforce is in recovery mode. This post was not really about the recessions affects on these industries as much as how changes in technology and the growth of the workforce in China, India and Brazil will affect our industries into the future.
Every blockbuster in Chicago is shutting down doors. Feels weird not to see the big blue sign anymore.
Yes, even though I remember when video stores first opened, it seems as if they have been around forever.
The tech. sector is also at risk. A lot of tech jobs are going oversea. My company is only growing oversea for the past few years. All head count in the US were frozen, but it’s starting to thaw a bit.
Yes, as I mentioned the tech sector is always up and down.
It’s been a while since record stores have been open other than to sell used ones. Your post made me a little sad to see so many things we grew up with gone or dissappearing.
It is a fact of life that things come and go.
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