GONE...GONE...NOTHIN'S GONNA BRING 'EM BACK...:

If you want a sense of where the nation's job market is headed, a good place to stand is inside the half-mile-long Skechers warehouse in Moreno Valley, California, where box after box of shoes is stacked upon row after row of shelving, which soars some 40 feet in the air. Physically, the place is a wonder--quiet, sleek, and environmentally friendly (at 1.8 million square feet, it's the largest officially certified "LEED Gold" building in the country). But what's most remarkable about the $250 million structure, which opened in 2011, is how few people work there.

The day I visited, a clump of men and women toiled away near a series of conveyor belts, filling small specialty orders. But machines--not human beings--were handling the bulk of the chores. "As you can see, there are no more people doing the retrieving," Iddo Benzeevi, the chief executive of Highland Fairview, the firm that developed the site, told me. "It's the computer doing it all by itself."

A driverless crane swung into motion nearby, delivering a box of shoes to its appointed spot in the stacks. A moment later, guided by a web of sensors and software, the mammoth contraption plucked another box and shuttled it in a different direction. Then it zipped back, red lights flashing. In this immense section of the facility, nobody lays a finger on any of the goods, all stamped "Made in China."

About 700 people work in the Skechers warehouse, according to Benzeevi, and as many as 300 more could be added in the next few years as business expands. That, however, is about 30 percent fewer jobs than one would expect at a more traditional logistics operation of the same size. A local newspaper, The Press-Enterprise, reported last year that because Skechers transferred work to Moreno Valley from a handful of less-automated warehouses, it has meant a net loss of as many as 400 jobs across the area.

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