Small engine mechanics are the mechanics who work on…wait for it…small engines! Yes, there’s a surprise. Actually, the job really is quite different from other engine mechanics, it usually being limited to working on the engines for lawnmowers, motorbikes and boats. This makes it a highly seasonal occupation, with many people only working in the spring and summer (although many do still work around the year, on snowmobiles, for example).

The training for the job is a mixture of on the job experience and short (one or two weeks say) programs designed by a manufacturer to teach about a new or certain type of engine. These latter programs are essential for undertaking warranty work, for example. There are no college degrees available here, although there are certain vocational colleges that will teach some of the rudiments. In fact, there’s quite a serious shortage of programs teaching the required skills in a formal manner.

They pay is around $14 an hour, which is smack on the national average for all jobs and that’s pretty good for something that doesn’t require a college degree.

As for our EQSQ personality tests, yes, we know it’s always the boys that like taking engines (and other things) to pieces. This isn’t in fact a male thing, it’s a male brain, or systemizing, thing. Working out why something isn’t working and then repairing it to make sure that it does, entirely normal systemizing behavior and so we can confidently state that this is a job for the male brain types.

Just to show that the difference in the numbers of men and women studying different college degrees is not some artifact of the US, something to do with the way the society is organized, have a look at this from The Times (London version). The major part of the article is about how different college degrees are harder or easier to get top marks (and thus a good job) in but that’s not I think the point that interests us here.

It’s the gender divide between the numbers doing different types of degrees: women make up 83% of those on psychology courses and 76% of those doing an English degree. Men 84% of engineering students and 65% of those taking physics. As always, we could take this to show that our society is biased, that the process of socialisation pushes people into one or another subject seen as “more appropriate” to their sex. It’s certainly true that this used to happen and it might still be going on.

However, one thing we can take from our EQSQ personality tests is that not everyone is suited to an English program, or a college degree in engineering. In deed, in the former we expect women to predominate, in the latter men, simply given the distribution of the systemizing and empathizing brain types.

This doesn’t of course, show that the socialisation or the discrimination are not going on: but we do need to keep in mind that there can be entirely valid and rational explanations for gender imbalances in college degrees that don’t include them.

…this year went to Frances E Allen and while hearty congratulations are of course in order it’s actually something else in this LA Times report about the prize for computer science that I wanted to note. Allen is one of the very few women who have been working in the field since the 1950s and I don’t think that any of us would try to claim that there wasn’t discrimination then against women: either in the jobs they were hired for, training they received or from society in general.

However, there’s something else reported there, that in 1994 just under one fifth of those gaining college degrees in computer science were women and now that figure for such college degrees is 17%. Almost exactly the same actually. So we could ask ourselves whether this ridding ourselves of discrimination has come to something of a halt?

This is where we can look at our EQSQ personality tests. As we know, computer science and such related subjects like software programming and so on are very much systemizing, or male brain, ones. It wouldn’t be a surprise to us therefore if we found that those taking the college degrees were all male brains: whether they were male or female in sex. And as it happens, we have empirical evidence that some 17% of women have in fact the male type brain.

We can look at this in one of two (non-contradictory) ways: our theory is roughly confirmed by real world numbers or, the number of women taking computer science college degrees is about right.

I was absolutely boggled to find that there are so many shipping and receiving clerks: 750,000 according to the BLS. For the amount of training required (high school and some knowledge of computers, certainly no college degree required) it’s pretty well paid too, $24,000 or so a year on average. The thing is though that without a college degree the career progression is pretty flat. The job involves preparing packages for shipping (both the packaging and the recording of it) and the closely allied receiving clerks are the people who get it at the other end. As there is always a need for people to do this, once started as a shipping clerk then you’ll probably stay one. Things like moving up the system, becoming a manager and so on, tends not to happen. Employers would rather bring someone in who has a college degree in business administration (say) and give them the three month training then make them the manager.

As to our EQSQ personality tests I think this is another of those jobs for the systemisers, the male brain types. The job is based upon detail, making sure that the right things get into the packages, that they’re correctly addressed and so on. Of course, there are some empathic qualities required, simply to get along with fellow co-workers, but I would plump for this being a systemiser’s job myself.

This career also rather surprised me: that there are nearly 200,000 people still doing this work. I had thought (which shows you how well attuned I am to industrial processes) that this was all automated now. Still, as the BLS tells us the job prospects are good and the pay, at $17 an hour on average looks good. The works itself is just as it says on the tin, working with sheet metal to make the things needed in either construction or manufacturing.

The training is almost always by apprenticeship: although some college courses can be included in this, there are no college degrees in the subject. If it’s not purely learning on the job or one of those apprenticeship schemes then the college classes are just that, classes that do not lead to a college degree.

As to those best suited to it (or perhaps who would enjoy the job the most, often very much the same thing) by the standards of our EQSQ personality tests then I think we would have to say the male brain types, the systemisers. It’s not just that it’s heavy physical work (and thus better suited to, although not exclusively, of course, the male physique) the fact that it is dealing with things rather than people edges it that way. It’s also true that the apprenticeship or training can be 5 years long, so it’s obviously a more complex system than simply cutting or hitting a piece of metal.

This is rather strange this job, I would have thought it paid much better than the $13.50 an hour the BLS says it does. However, looking a the economics behind why they say it it does make sense. There’s a technological change going on which means that more chips can be made from each wafer and there’s also a lot of offshoring of the production process going on. While that’s good for people in the Philippines or Thailand who want to be semiconductor processors, obviously both will be bad for the wages of those in the US.

The training is usually an associate’s or two year college degree. A goodly amount of math and physics is needed to get the qualification. It can be done in a one year certificate program at some vocational schools but the community or junior college degree is the most usual.

Looking at the job itself it seems fairly clear who, from our EQSQ personality tests, would be best at this. On top of that math and physics requirement is the highly detail oriented nature of the work itself, monitoring and where necessary, altering, the production process of the silicon wafers and the chips that come from them. Very definitely the systemizers who would be good at this and as people tend to enjoy what they’re good at, also the people who would enjoy it.

An interesting little piece in The Southern (meaning Southern Illinnois) on the subject of the gender gap in academia. I just love it when real world observations concord with theory: especially when the observations are recorded by someone who doesn’t know the theory, thus no bias to the observations.

Looking at the difference in the number of male and female professors the reporter sees that the imbalance has sharply reduced in recent decades. This is consistent with our own view that there certainly was direct discrimination in the past and that there is not (or at least a lot less) now. He also notes that women earn the majority of college degrees these days (although men still the majority of higher college degrees) and correctly notes that this will also skew the results (as to become a Professor you must have one of those higher college degrees). We even see the attribution of at least part of the gender gap being to childbirth and care, with the average 3.5 years out of the labor force having an effect. All of this is right in line with the generally accepted economics of the subject.

However, the one little further part that our EQSQ personality tests can explain is also there, even though the reporter is unaware of it. There’s a shortage of (for example) female economics professors : as we know that’s something of a male brain subject so we would actually expect this. There’s also a shortage of men in nursing: again, as we know, a very female brain subject. Isn’t it just great when the real world accords with the theory?

As you know we like to keep abreast of the news here on the subject of autism. Given that our hero, Simon Baron Cohen, the originator of our EQSQ personality tests, is a researcher into the subject, this shouldn’t be a surprise. Indeed, those personality tests derive directly from his research into the condition.

The new research for today comes from Scientific American and describes the results of investigations into the genetics of autism. There have long been though to be as many as 30 genes involved, with six providing a major risk. Damage to or deletion of any of them could cause one or other form of autism (which is why we refer to it as a spectrum: it is actually many different things all with similar symptoms of greater or lesser strength). Researchers are now confident that they have identified one, neurexin, the absence of which does indeed cause a form of autism.

Now it is obviously true that if we find one explanation for one set of symptoms, that this is not necessarily the explanation for all incidences of that set of symptoms. A bleeding finger can come from knife cut, from a paper cut or a dog bite. So this does not rule out that there could be an environmental explanation for the recent rise in autism cases.

However, it does lend greater weight to Baron Cohen’s essential thesis about autism. That it is a genetic disease, that the incidence is rising because of assortative mating (essentially, that greater social mobility means that more carriers of the gene are marrying, thus leading to more children actually expressing it).

Only by correctly identifying the cause can we begin to arrive at treatments.

I think we all know what security guards do don’t we? We’ve all seen enough of them, after all. I’ve been wondering where the profession would place on our EQSQ personality tests scale though. There’s a great deal of interaction with the public so one would hope for empathic qualites, some female brain influences. However, the entire job is dedicated to the preservation of order, to imposing a system upon a sometimes chaotic world, so presumably the male brain talents are also required? I just don’t know really. Obviously, when it gets to the areas (like at nuclear power plants) where more systemizing is required along with the greater training (and the higher wages) then it shifts more to the male brain end of the spectrum. But the basic job? I’m afraid I really don’t know.

The training is almost always on the job. For those who don’t carry a weapon it will be very brief indeed, actually, that’s one of the attractions of the job, the fact that you can drift in and out of it. There’s also a lot of part-time work available which is another attraction: indeed, I know several people who worked their way through their college degree working security. Armed guards get more training and of course employers love to get people who have had formal weapons training. These sorts of jobs are prized by retired military and police (and many serving police officers are known to work part time to supplement their salary).

But in this training there’s no need for a college degree at all, nor really any formal training program. That makes it easy to get into but it also means that wages are low: around $20,000 a year on average.

It’s very important, when thinking about securities sales agents, to remember that these are not investment advisors. They are exactly what the name implies, sellers of securities. Now, it may well be that some will sell you the best investments for your situation and that others less reputable do not, but it is the act of your buying or selling something that generates the commission which provides their income.

This makes judging them by the standards of our EQSQ personality tests fairly easy: salesmen need to be empathic characters, in order to win the trust of the customers. This might sound like a rather cynical estimation of those who do the job but it’s one I’ve done myself and it is the reality.

Despite that reality in order to do the job properly it is almost always necessary to have a college degree. It doesn’t have to be a college degree in anything specific, like accountancy, or banking, although classes in economics, business administration and so on are useful. The construction of a portfolio, the recommendations on what should be bought or sold are done by others (called analysts) and the salesmen are those who transmit their thoughts to the customers. That degree is used more as a badge of a certain level of intelligence and dedication, a signal, rather than the specific things learned at college being all that important. Obviously it helps if the salesman is conversant with the workings of the economy, interest rates and so on but even that isn’t really necessary. An outgoing personality and an engaging and pleasant personality count for much more.