Right about now, a lot of college seniors from Verona are probably wondering about their job prospects. So are many of the juniors, sophomores and freshmen behind them, as are several members of the Class of 2011 that MyVeronaNJ.com has been interviewing for stories.
They, and you, might want to take a look at this month’s cover story in Wired magazine, called “The Smartest Jobs in America“. Since Wired is a tech magazine, you’d expect that it would talk a lot about Internet and computer jobs. But that’s not what this feature is about–it’s about the fields that are going to need a lot of brainpower. Here’s how Wired defines its premise:
“Smart jobs tend to scramble the line between blue-collar and white-collar. Their titles tend toward the white (technician, specialist, analyst), but the underlying industries often tend toward the blue, toward the making of physical stuff. Smart jobs can involve factories and machines, plastics and chemicals, but operating those instruments and manipulating those materials demands far more brains than brawn. Even though some of these jobs are nominally in old-fashioned industries, visit the factories and shops and fields and you’ll find that these industries are in the process of being utterly transformed.
And now the big question: Will Verona’s kids be smart enough to get them?
