For the last 2 decades, we've been told that the Information- or Computer Age would put an end to blue-collar professions. We’d all have cubicles and work on computers and never break a sweat. High-school shop classes were all but discontinued in the 1990s (including at my high school in the heart of muscle-car New Jersey) and guidance counselors urged everyone to apply to college.

A class divide existed, too: People considered working with one’s hands for a living to be less worthy, and those who did so were thought to be missing out on the advantages of higher education. Parents didn’t brag that their son was a skilled mechanic; instead, stockbrokers got all the parental adulation.

In part, the roles may soon reverse. Many of the groups hit the hardest -- scientists, computer-software engineers, artists, designers, and writers -- don't produce anything concrete. People in blue-collar professions -- say, car mechanics -- can point to a tangible outcome at the end of every day. What the information economy has done is expose just how intangible, and outsourceable, the work of the creative types is.

As Princeton economist Alan Blinder says, “You can’t hammer a nail over the Internet.” It's a crucial point: In an age of austerity, we need more repairmen. Shovel-ready projects -- the bulwark of the president’s stimulus package -- don’t demand white-collar jobs. The green economy, if there is to be one, requires manufacturing and manual labor. We already have the technology -- the next step is actually building the wind turbines and the solar-paneled roofs. This work can be measured in pure economic terms, but it's harder to do so for longstanding professional fields like media, banking, and engineering.

The question for new professionals is one their parents never asked them to consider: Is spending $50,000 a year on a college degree now a gamble instead of an investment? For those on the fence, working with your hands may be a safer investment -- and more satisfying than sitting in an office or cubicle every day.