America's Future without a Middle Class, is here.

I am amazed we haven't tried to stop the outsourcing of American jobs, or changed the terms in NAFTA, CAFTA and GATT. While other countries control their economic engines for quality of life and national security reasons, we're demanding even fewer regulations. So we're now at this spot in time:

(AP) Whenever companies start hiring freely again, job-seekers with specialized skills and education will have plenty of good opportunities. Others will face a choice: Take a job with low pay — or none at all … once employers do step up hiring, some economists expect job openings to fall mainly into two categories of roughly equal numbers: Professional fields with higher pay. Think lawyers, research scientists and software engineers … Lower-skill and lower-paying jobs, like home health care aides and store clerks.

And those in between? Their outlook is bleaker. Economists foresee fewer moderately paid factory supervisors, postal workers and office administrators. Not until 2014 or later is the nation expected to have regained all, or nearly all, the 8.4 million jobs lost to the recession. Millions of lost jobs in real estate, for example, aren't likely to be restored this decade, if ever.

The threat stems, in part, from the economy's continuing shift from one driven by
manufacturing to one fueled by service industries … the number of middle-income service-sector jobs will shrink, according to government projections. Any job that can be automated or outsourced overseas is likely to continue to decline. The service sector's growth could also magnify the nation's income inequality, with more people either affluent or financially squeezed.

On one point there's broad agreement: Of 8 million-plus jobs lost to the recession — in fields like manufacturing, real estate and financial services — many, perhaps most, aren't coming back … Says Richard Florida, a professor at University of Toronto, "We're becoming more of a divided nation by the work we do." And
innovations in high technology and alternative energy are likely to spur growth
in occupations that don't yet exist … Manufacturing has shed 2 million jobs since the recession began. Construction has lost 1.9 million, financial services 651,000.

But the biggest factor has been the bust in real estate. The vanished jobs range from construction workers and furniture makers to loan officers, appraisers and material suppliers. Moody's Analytics estimates the total number of housing-related jobs lost at 2.4 million.

Manufacturing is likely to keep shedding jobs, sending lower-skilled work overseas.

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