One of the first things that one would notice from looking at the map is that truck driving is one of the most popular jobs nationwide.
NPR theorizes that this is because truck driving hasn’t been impacted by globalization and automation— at least yet.
In other words, truck drivers have to be present within the continental United States in order to serve their purpose. Also, there have to be people who drive the vehicles from one stop to the next, although it is believed that self-driving vehicles will exist in the not-so-distant future.
The fact that any driver who delivers goods is categorized as a truck driver in the U.S. also creates a larger workforce in the occupation. Schoolteachers, for example, are split up by the type of school at which they teach— Kindergarten, primary, secondary, etc.
Some of the other observations made from the data include the fact that secretary jobs have largely become obsolete since the 1980s; manufacturing and farming jobs have mostly gone by the wayside; there are more lawyers than government workers in D.C., our nation’s capital; and tech companies have turned Utah into Silicon Slopes.
For their study, NPR compared the most common vocations in 1978, 1996, and 2014.
