The U.S. Needs to Invest in Minds, Not Miners

In J.D. Vance's memoir "Hillbilly Elegy," which recounts the blasted hopes of those left out of the modern economy, grandfather Papaw makes a prescient prediction: "Your generation will make its living with their minds, not their hands." What Papaw didn't foresee was that this shift would be far easier for women than for men.

The U.S. economy has long been moving away from "hands" industries such as mining and manufacturing toward "minds" sectors such as finance, health and education. From 1970 to 2016, the share of workers in the former declined from 38 percent to 16 percent, while the share in the latter increased from 26 to 44 percent. Here's how that looks: