5 Jobs You’ll Be Surprised to Learn Are Still Alive and Kicking

Though they’re not making nearly as many swords
5 Jobs You’ll Be Surprised to Learn Are Still Alive and Kicking

Nowadays, everyone from artists to bloggers are worried about their jobs being made obsolete by technology. “Aww, too bad,” might be the reply of a knocker-upper, the people who used to wake everyone up in the morning and were wholly replaced by the alarm clock. Though if they did still exist, they’d have to change that name, or give it to the people who run IVF clinics. There are some jobs, though, that you’d think were long gone, but are in fact still around.

Here are five jobs you’ll be surprised to learn people continue to make a living at.

Blacksmith

Given the dramatically reduced need for swords, you might think that blacksmiths are few and far between. Anything we need made out of metal these days can be bent or stamped out by a robot, without all the need for hammers and tink-tinking. Some folks remain by the bellows, however, working metal with human muscle alone. I’m not just talking about artisans with Etsy shops selling coat hooks and fire pokers, either — that would be a cop-out. 

Probably the most common modern blacksmith exists in the form of farriers, or the professionals who care for and shoe the hooves of horses. If that feels like a bait-and-switch, just know that the word “farrier” comes from the Latin ferrarius, meaning blacksmith. Shoeing horses, in particular, is still a job very much dependent on hammers, heat and pliable metal.

Lighthouse Keeper

The days of lighthouses, and their keepers, feel like they should be pretty long over. With satellites and GPS and no shortage of screens telling you exactly where you are, it feels like smashing into the coast by accident shouldn’t be a big risk. Yes, some lighthouses have been long relieved of their actual boat-warning duties, and serve as weirdly tall gift shops. But many lighthouses still serve their original purpose, and some still have keepers that live there full-time. Depending on how introverted you are, that might either seem like a prison with an unusually nice view, or have you checking for vacancies. 

Honestly, for someone like me? A homebody that keeps weird hours to begin with? I now have a backup plan.

Midwives

Now, this is likely only surprising to you if you’ve never had a child, or if you have had a child but did shockingly little research around it. Midwives, or women who assist in childbirth despite (usually) not being a doctor, feel like they should have gone out of fashion along with childbed fever. With modern medicine, you’d think everyone would want to give birth surrounded by as many trained doctors as possible. 

Childbirth, though, is obviously an incredible emotional experience, which means that some people are very particular about the environment it happens in. There’s not much reason to set a broken bone at home, but when the procedure in question involves bringing your child into this world? You might not want their first breath to smell like disinfectant. In fact, midwives have been growing in popularity in recent years.

Milkmen

Speaking of pregnancies, what about the milkman? A role famous for delivering milk and strife into marriages doesn’t seem like something that survived the test of time, and for a while, it hadn’t. But milkmen are making a resurgence in a strange turn of fate. Generally, the COVID pandemic wasn’t known for creating jobs, outside of mask and Q-tip factories. However, dairy farms, when they couldn’t sell their products face-to-face, revived the milk delivery, and with a spike in grocery delivery, the milkman is once again finding traction

We’ll see in a few years if it also correlates to a spike in divorce rate.

Travel Agent

The internet and online commerce did massive damage to all sorts of brick-and-mortar businesses, even the ones that weren't already confusing and expensive. Booking travel online was a clear and obvious upgrade on basically every front, and it’s true, it’s much less likely to spot a travel agent storefront on Main Street. The profession, however, is very much not dead. It’s instead pivoted into a niche service. 

Sure, they probably have plenty of stubborn Boomers solidifying their bottom line, but there’s also people who still prefer to have an actual person putting care and planning into their vacation.

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