Another former draftsman here...started a new job at a civil engineering firm and was tasked with learning AutoCAD. Quickly became once of the lead CAD draftsmen in the department, as part of that I picked up AutoLISP scripting to automate a lot of work. I found I liked writing scripts so I took an introductory C programming course; I aced that.
At the same time I was going to college part-time nights as an engineering major, but from my perch as a draftsman I was not really seeing a lot to love about civil engineering. I ran across an ad for a tech support job at a startup CAD software vendor, applied, and got the gig. I quit that drafting job, put away my ink pens and electric eraser, and switched to a computer science major.
The rest is history, now a senior systems software engineer working on projects for NASA. So godspeed John Walker, thanks for pointing me in the direction of a 30+ year career that has been both lucrative and interesting.
I would say "technology" is more appropriate than "automation". That and globalization have done it.
Example: I live in Baltimore, a city that used to have an array of industries paying living wage blue-collar jobs that didn't require a lot in the way of education or other qualifications. All those industries -- shipping/stevedoring, shipbuilding, steel, auto manufacturing, general manufacturing -- were either globalized and went overseas or in the case of shipping underwent a technology shift (containerization) that eliminated most of the good-paying jobs.
The white collar jobs were hit more by technology/automation. The city used to be a regional banking/insurance center, but between consolidation of banks or insurance companies to compete in wider markets and technology automating most of the clerical-level stuff, those jobs disappeared too.
The only jobs left in the city now are at the bottom or the top of the wage scale, the middle is completely gone. And you can easily see the impact it has had on the city.
One of my favorite "dead tech" memories is from when I worked as a CAD operator for an engineering firm in the late 1980s, where we had a half-dozen AutoCAD workstations and a Roland pen plotter that used a large roll (several hundred feet long) of feed paper. In AutoCAD, you could sometimes fat-finger your work and kick a drawn entity way out into coordinate space without noticing it.
As such you always needed to do a zoom extents every so often (and definitely before plotting it) to make sure you didn't have your own little Nemesis object lurking out in the dark.
My co-worker neglected to do this one time and casually sent the document to the plotter to be drawn. When the plotter reached the entity way out in coordinate space, you heard the click-thunk of switching pens and then a high pitched whine as the plotter started rapidly spooling out paper to draw it. I've never seen anyone move so fast as he dove to reach the plotter power switch before
all the paper scrolled off the spool and onto the floor.
Plotters were state of the art back then but they have pretty much disappeared without a trace. I think the technology has been somewhat repurposed to make vinyl sign cutters, they are basically a plotter with a cutting blade attached instead of a pen.
My former boss used to get really exercised by my doodling in meetings. He tried to bust me on not paying attention until I recounted in detail the meeting discussion along with several questions about subtle points that came up from various comments during the meeting.
Subsequent to that, guess who got canned, and who has since been promoted TWICE to a very senior level and still doodles (during remote online meetings).
Hey, it served it's purpose -- as a shiny prop for whatever political candidate championed it to come and spout some pretty words and get a nice photo op.
What happened in the 1980s was the culmination of Baltimore's deindustrialization. Baltimore had the misfortune of having every single one of its major job-producing industries decimated by globalization and consolidation. Manufacturing, steel, automobiles, shipbuilding were all killed by globalization, containerization basically wiped out port jobs, and consolidation of the insurance and banking industries wiped out Baltimore's medium skill white-collar jobs (Baltimore used to be a regional insurance/banking center). What was left of banking and insurance after consolidation got wiped out by technology. I know a guy who got laid off consecutively by three different banks before he finally gave up on the banking industry in Baltimore.
And therein lies the solution to Baltimore's problems. If you were to somehow provide 30-50,000 low-skill living-wage jobs and maybe an additional 10-15,000 medium-skill white-collar jobs, you could start to "fix" Baltimore. Because the net effect of all those people having money to spend plus the halo effect adding another 10-15,000 jobs (providing new services for all those working people) would be so massive it would change the city. The problem is really just that simple -- total lack of economic opportunity for a large fraction of Baltimore's population who are lacking in skills or education.
Baltimore has "good bones" but intractable economic problems. And the root problem is, how would you provide those jobs? If I had that answer, I'd run for emperor of Baltimore.
I think affluence of the local population and job competition also affect the rankings. The places with the worst-rated homes generally have larger populations of less affluent (i.e. on Medicaid or will be soon) patients, and there are also a lot of other job options for people aside from working in that sort of a facility (not the most pleasant job to be sure). The ones with the best rankings seem to be in areas where there is a more affluent population (nursing care ain't cheap) and/or jobs in a nursing care facility are more attractive compared to other local options (resulting in a higher quality workforce). A rough correlation, YMMV.
But that last bit about lack of other attractive job options contributing to a higher quality workforce was something that I was told by someone looking for nursing/assisted living care options, and in my experience (aging parents and aging parents of friends) it is actually true. I can also confirm from personal experience that New Mexico has absolutely horrible nursing/elder care.
Lastly, re: I think I'd rather kill myself than ever go live in a nursing home? You and me both. I've seen enough that I'd rather take myself out at a time/place of my choosing rather than go into nursing care. I don't think most people give it a thought though, much less have seen it firsthand.
At the same time I was going to college part-time nights as an engineering major, but from my perch as a draftsman I was not really seeing a lot to love about civil engineering. I ran across an ad for a tech support job at a startup CAD software vendor, applied, and got the gig. I quit that drafting job, put away my ink pens and electric eraser, and switched to a computer science major.
The rest is history, now a senior systems software engineer working on projects for NASA. So godspeed John Walker, thanks for pointing me in the direction of a 30+ year career that has been both lucrative and interesting.