This has a lot to do with the widening wealth gap.  If your assets are fairly liquid you can easily exploit new opportunities.  If you happened to buy a house near a steel mill, there is not much you can do.<p>Consider high school students are making choices based on what they think the job market will be in <i>50!</i> years.  Sure, we still have some bank tellers even with ATM&#x27;s, but even a 50% reduction in demand is devastating if it takes 10+ years of specialist education. Retraining may seem reasonable for truckers, but for highly skilled professions it&#x27;s tossing a way years of education and on the job training.