Phew!

so does this mean I should drop out of med school with just 2 years remaining?

Repo men.

Woohoo, I'm on personal leave from my Network and Systems Administration job to do an internship in Software Development!
I'm totally set.

Oddly enough, my first thought upon reading the title of the post was a strange intersection between birth control and unemployment

@canuckistani: Yes. Yes it does. You should also begin panicking.....NOW!

Now lets cross reference this list with top ten outsourced jobs and see how many remain?

um, nurses, secretaries, door to door salesmen and teh finance.

@Sh3rpa: Woe betide those companies that try to outsource their whole sysadmin staff. You need people on hand for that.

My job is fairly recession proof, provided that the government doesn't reneg on a federal mandate and our two main customers spend millions upon millions of dollars to switch to someone else.

I doubt this list will do much to silence the critics who say we are graduating too many business majors and not enough engineers.

Network admin? Sweet.

9. Business Analysis, Research

So why can't I find a job doing this?

Ugh.

Recession proof, but not neccesarily export-proof. How much of this (other than nursing) is already outsourced to countries?

Policemen, firemen, EMT, nurses, these seem to me to be both recession proof and overseas-outsourcing proof, which is even more important.

hmm, good think I am in Nursing school! Go Rns!

@feralparakeet: I sort of do it. Business Analysis, software support isn't on there, but I have to research to determine if it's a bug or the customer being stupid.

No mortician?

@SkokieGuy and @Sh3rpa: Believe me, what Hijakk said is perfectly true. The IT industry might have the most outsourced jobs, but they also have jobs that are very firmly set here. System, Network and DB admins, Business analysts and software designers all NEED to be close to the base and the client. Also, most of the outsourced jobs are bulk coding, testing and such. The ones I mentioned above wont typically be outsourced. (But thats not saying they wont hire someone on an H1 to do the same work :D -- but hey, they pay taxes too.)

SALES REPS FTW! Nice.

With the dollar on the drop... People overseas are buying a lot more than usual.

Let's say I feel decently safe doing air export for the time being.

@javi0084: I agree on that one.

But Forbes must be smoking some real good stuff. Yes, sales rep is recession proof job. But keeping that job, is a whole thing in itself, especially when people are not buying.

Nursing, because there will always be sick people.

Customer (dis)Service, people will alway complain.

IT. Don't hold your breath. I think a revolution of DIYers will try to start up. And when they screw up, and they will. Don't expect to get paid as well.

what recession?

11. Work for a european company in the US.

those jobs suck. want to keep your job? work in the education sector. namely, work for a state-funded college.

no teaching?

@canuckistani: Actually, with the credits that you have now you could switch to an RN or an NP pretty easily.

If Obama gives us universal health care, the people who really love medicine might want to be Nurse Practioners instead of physicians...

@canuckistani: No, but maybe I should drop out of law school with 2 years remaining!

What about law enforcement? Did they forget that crime goes up when people don't have jobs/money?

I thought the Mob and porn industry was recession proof.

The worse the economy gets, the more business there is at the Welfare office. Now that's a recession proof job!

@k6richar: apparently the proliferation of plan b will put an end to that!

WOO!

it's interesting that professional list makers didn't make the list...

Software DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT?

What a load of bull. Ain't nothing a programmer here can do that one overseas can't, except whine in your face.

Now network admin, you need to be physically there to fix stuff.

I'm glad I went toward Accounting rather than theoretical mathematics. Theoretical mathematicians never make lists like these.

Yeah, I'll buy #2. Overseas outsourcing to people who turn out crap that doesn't work for 1/3rd the price in 5x the time is a bigger threat to my software engineering job than the recession is.

Heck, a booming economy is a bigger threat, for that matter! I lost a lot more of my software engineering colleagues in layoffs at the end of my employer's most profitable quarter ever than I have in the subsequent recession.

@Hijakk: Exactly. A computer/phone system can't realistically be managed by a guy in India. Heck, we have multiple locations and occasionally I have to get in the company car and drive out for IT work.

Also, we aren't in a recession so stop panicking everyone!

@donkeyjote: Now network admin, you need to be physically there to fix stuff.

Exactly. You can't fly someone in to run wires or fix your toilets either. I put Network admin in the same sort of category as other maintenance type jobs, except you get less dirty in IT.

Mmmmm disagree with all of those except #3. An "internet" company I worked at laid off people in all the above positions (obviously, no on in Nursing on staff.) citing the need to reduce headcount.

Is anyone REALLY safe?

Seemingly missing from the list is the guy who "deals with the goddamn customers so the engineers don't have to."

AKA Project manager aka Business Analysis, Software Implementation. :)

admission counselors FTW!

@rockasocky: There's always work for bankruptcy attorneys!

@SkokieGuy: @pixiegirl1: Less money all around means towns can't pay their police/fire/emt, let alone hire more. A lot of towns where I live have been forced to cut back on town hall office hours, road repairs, etc, and I wouldn't be surprised if public safety is close behind, as building fees and revenue streams dry up, and citizens reject higher budgets to prevent tax increases (not that they don't already).

@pixiegirl1: Crime goes up, but many police forces are downsizing - you don't get paid more because crime goes up, but with less taxes coming in, the budget gets smaller...maybe why crime goes up?

What about public education? Yea I know there are budget cuts but if you are destaffed because the Principal didn't manage the budget properly but you had a good evaluation then they can simply transfer you to another school. Bottom line is I think there is no reason why the education system shouldn't be on the list.

There must be some method to Forbes' madness, but Finance Staff?

Let's see...Bear Stearns, Countrywide, Citigroup, Merrill Lynch, BofA...all of them have had mass layoffs numbering in the 1000s in 2007/08. Not to mention, when it comes to the plain number of jobs nationwide, finance is just not that big of an employment sector.

As for 'sales rep', what does that include exactly? At first glance, there are a lot of sales jobs out there but a lot of them aren't real jobs or jobs worth having. If you were to go through the listings in my local paper it sure looks like there are a lot of sales jobs, but anywhere from 1/4 to 1/2 of them are borderline or outright scams.

@ITDEFX: Believe it or not, public education can be a pretty volatile field, especially for those with relatively few years of experience.

Where I live, schools live or die by the fate of the district's tax levy. If voters don't approve or renew the levy...hello layoffs. Likewise, K-12 education is the 800-pound gorilla of most state budgets. If the state has to drastically reduce expenditures they're going to cut education, simply because that's where the money is.

Number 1, baby!

I disagree with the list...its pretty idiotic for anyone to go into the finance sector while turmoil is occuring in the very area - finance. The same for sales, does the idea work this way? Recession = less buy? Why be in sales?

Here is the list I think should be:

1) Nursing
2) Teacher
3) Doctors
4) Police
5) Mechanics
6) Military

Those are what I think is recession proof.

Blogger?