At roughly 5:00 pm Pacific Standard Time (PST), on the Friday before Labor Day weekend, we received a faxed press release from our friends at Dow Jones announcing a new report which lists America's "best and worst jobs":

Best jobs
1. Financial planner
2. Web site manager
3. Computer systems analyst
4. Actuary
5. Computer programmer
6. Software engineer
7. Meteorologist
8. Biologist
9. Astronomer
10. Paralegal assistant

Worst jobs
1. Commercial fisherman
2. Roustabout
3. Lumberjack
4. Cowboy
5. Ironworker
6. Garbage collector
7. Construction labor
8. Taxi driver
9. Stevedore
10. Welder

Unsettled, we immediately left work.

We spent the better part of Labor Day—a holiday established by the labor movement in 1882, dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers (for those who don't know)—contemplating exactly why we found this report, which was published by CareerJournal.com, “the executive job site from The Wall Street Journal”, in conjunction with the authors of the 2001 Jobs Rated Almanac, Tony Lee (who is also the editor-in-chief of CareerJournal.com) and Lee Krantz, so entirely disheartening.

Dispensing with all of the general criticisms of superlative lists like these (eg “they’re meaningless tripe designed for easy consumption”), we are concerned with several specific questions these rankings pose: For one, how can paralegal assistant possibly be the tenth-best job, when anybody who has served time as a paralegal knows that it is an altogether miserable experience? For another, weren’t Roustabouts (that is, members of a ship’s crew who perform manual labor) and Stevedores (that is, those who load and unload ships in port) rendered extinct some time in the late 1800s?

Of even greater concern, though, is the implicit commentary these rankings offer regarding work—and workers—in the New Economy. You see, according to the Dow Jones release, the rankings are based on “data gathered during the second half of last year”, and are based on “six key criteria”: environment, income, employment outlook, physical demands, security, and stress. It seems, then, that for all the advances afforded by technology and the Internet—from improving communications, to streamlining operations, to creating wealth—the resulting New Economic world reduces the definitive American icon—the cowboy—to the fourth-worst job in the land, and considers any level of physical exertion negative data.

Evolution, it seems, has taken a turn for the soft—software, soft bellies. Output is measured in hours billed, not goods produced, as we sit on our bottoms, considering the bottom line.

For those of you who feel no reflexive trepidation over these rankings—all you self-congratulatory financial planners (gold), Web site managers (silver), and computer systems analysts (bronze)—consider that it might not be long before there is no one qualified to build your house, no one willing to collect your garbage; or, the more likely result that, as more and more people migrate to the New Economy positions on the “Best Jobs” list (positions which are, by all accounts, readily available), and as trade schools focus more narrowly on tech- and Internet-oriented skills, the cost of finding people qualified to provide these “Worst Job” services will be high. Think it could never happen to you? Just ask a Silicon Valley homeowner.

Worse yet, consider a world where your offspring dream not of being cowboys, firemen, ballerinas, coaches or teachers, but aspire to be paralegal assistants or (God help us) actuaries (that is, those who calculate insurance and annuity premiums).

Perhaps the only piece that could have made this montage even more disconcerting is if “Educator” appeared on the list of ten worst jobs. And why not? After all, the teaching environment can be awful, the pay is criminally low, and though job security is fairly good (because nobody else is willing to make the sacrifices), the physical demands are inestimable (no showing up with a hangover, and surfing the Web all day), security is uncertain (remember Columbine?), and stress levels are astronomically high (you try teaching a roomful of kids).

Which makes one wonder how long it will be before the Jobs Rated Almanac positions teacher somewhere alongside garbage collector and taxi driver.

The wakeup:call™ is brought to you by Alarm Clock Communications, Inc. Copyright © 2000, All Rights Reserved.