News Cut: January 11, 2009 Archive

The best and worst jobs

Posted at 8:48 AM on January 11, 2009 by Bob Collins (7 Comments)
Filed under: Economy

Eat your vegetables and do your math homework, kids. It's where the good jobs are. So says the Web site, Careercast, which has ranked the best and worst jobs in today's economy.

See the common thread in the top ten?

1. Mathematician
2. Actuary
3. Statistician
4. Biologist
5. Software engineer
6. Computer systems analyst
7. Historian
8. Sociologist
9. Industrial designer
10. Accountant

And the worst jobs...

1. Lumberjack
2. Dairy farmer
3. Taxi driver
4. Seaman
5. Emergency medical technician (EMT)
6. Roofer
7. Garbage collector
8. Welder
9. Roustabout
10. Ironworker

The ratings are, we're told, based on a number of factors including salary, stress, and physical demands.

Some other rankings in the list of 200 include federal judge (69), newscaster (75), airplane pilot (116), newspaper reporter (140), undertaker (164), photojournalist (167), and bricklayer (180).

"Blogger" did not make the list. Again.

For you old-timers, if you had to do it again, would you take the same career path? Me? My first career choice was airline pilot. These days, either road would've led to a dead end.

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These are the good old days

Posted at 6:51 PM on January 11, 2009 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)
Filed under: Economy

What can we conclude from two unrelated-but-related stories out today?

Reports the Associated Press:

Hybrid sales plunged 43 percent in December and 50 percent in November, according to the auto Web site Edmunds.com, surpassing the industry's overall sales decline of 36 percent in December and 37 percent the month before.

Toyota watched sales of the Prius, the top-selling hybrid in the U.S., tumble 45 percent in December, while sales of Nissan Motor Co.'s Altima hybrid fell a whopping 70 percent.

Meanwhile, you've probably noticed that gasoline prices are on the way up again, thanks to the violence in the Middle East::

Crude oil prices increased by 30 percent in the last seven days, according to information posted by the New York Times, causing the wholesale price of gasoline to increase by 40 percent since Dec. 24.

"A lot of people are talking about dollar-a-gallon gasoline, when the wholesale market seems to be pointing to $2 a gallon," said Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst at the Oil Price Information Service (OPIS).

All of this on a day when Ford unveiled its all-electric plans.

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