As the air cargo industry starts to wonder more about the future than the present, it might take note of recent data from the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL).

Between 2008 and 2018, the U.S. manufacturing sector will lose 431,000 people in semiconductors, printing, car parts and clothing. During the same period the U.S. health care industry will add more than two
million to its payrolls. So that might be a straw in the wind for forwarder, airline or integrator with pharmaceutical or medical supply customers. Not so great if you’re shipping U.S.-made car parts or semiconductors.

However the health care industry is an economic cost rather than net benefit. Or to put it another way, if Americans were healthier, then there would be more money to spend on something else. Assuming it wasn’t on another war, it could be education — which in turn might lead to more higher-paying jobs.

But looking at the Labor Department’s table of the 30 occupations with the largest employment growth to 2018, apart from post-secondary teaching that requires a PhD and physicians who need an MD, just about everybody else can apparently learn on the job. Seems education in these occupations is not a huge prerequisite.

So who is going to pay for the increase in the health care industry payroll? Some of them will have to be the more than 1.5 million educated Americans added to the computer systems and professional business service sectors by 2018.

The Department says U.S. employment is forecast to increase by 15.3 million or 10.1 percent in the next eight years. Assuming companies don’t re-hire the millions that have been laid off since 2007, the government numbers suggest it will take until 2018 to create the same amount of jobs that have been lost in the past 18 months.

For the U.S. transport sector, employment growth is forecast to be less than one percent per year to 2018 — hardly an indicator of re-hiring due to economic expansion.

So will the additions to the health care and professional services payrolls be enough to drive a resurgence of consumer-led U.S. economic growth?

All the signs point to 2013 before the air cargo industry is back to where it was in 2007. However that’s a global figure. Without a big economic bounce-back, Americans are likely to save, not spend, money in the near future.

So look to FedEx, UPS, DP/DHL, TNT, Lufthansa et al to expand within Asia, India, Latin America and the CIS sphere of influence in the next eight years.

Despite what British Airways says about alliances, North America is not the future for air cargo.