In a labor market free of racial discrimination, one would expect whites and Native Americans to have somewhat similar outcomes, not starkly divergent outcomes like we see in Alaska, the Northern Plains, and the Southwest.

Some manufacturing is coming back to America, to be sure, but not the assembly line jobs that used to be the core of manufacturing employment. Computerized machine tools and robots are doing an increasing portion of the work -- which is why many companies can afford to bring their factories back here. Get it? Technology and globalization are driving the good deals American consumers are getting this holiday season. But the same forces are keeping wages down, and are even on the verge of eliminating many of the low-wage retail and related service jobs many Americans now need to make ends meet. To put it another way, American consumers getting great shopping deals are also American workers on the losing end of those same deals.

Given the challenging job market, it may be surprising to learn that some of today's highest-paying, in-demand professions are actually blue-collar jobs.