Vanishing jobs

Regarding “Tough challenge for Trump: Getting more men back to work” (Page B4, Jan. 9), even in the office environment, jobs have gone away due to personal computers and automation. When I first started working as a professional for a multi-national in 1979, our office was awash with clerks, technicians and secretaries. I would take handwritten notes to my secretary to be typed, clerks would do mundane tasks like folding paper, copying, etc. But with the advent of the personal computer and the copying machine most of those jobs gradually evaporated. Now an admin (nee secretary) is responsible for 50-100 staff and has no time to type a note for anyone; you do that yourself on your workstation.

Professionals do their own copying; there are almost no clerks or technicians to do mundane tasks. Those used to be good jobs for people with a high school diploma, and maybe a year or two of college. But they are gone, and they are not coming back.