Our society has transformed from a farming-based economy (1800's) to a manufacturing economy (1900's) to a knowledge-based economy (2000's). Almost all of the jobs that require unskilled labor are gone, as are many of the jobs that require skilled labor. What's left to us are the knowledge-based service jobs and the best of those are in high tech and finance and insurance and the like. These are great paying jobs and they are challenging and stimulating. But they come at a price. In the software world alone, in my working career the tools we used have moved from Fortran to C to C++ to Java to Perl to Python to Ruby on Rails - whatever the hell that is. And here is a partial list of the tools you need to be familiar with to build and maintain websites: html, css, php, javascript, and sql. I could no easier get a job today as a software developer as I could take out someone's appendix. My point is that the cool and high paying job of today will be tomorrow's commodity and you along with it, unless you make the effort to keep up.
Lots of employers, especially in the technology industries, want their employees to have the most up to date skills and talents. It costs far more to hire a new employee than to arrange training and classes in new technologies for the existing people. Push your company to send you to classes to keep your skills up to date.
Even outside of the technology industries, companies are realizing the value of industry specific training and skills. Encourage your company to invest in its employees if they don't offer training and advancement classes.
Ultimately, it will be up to you, though. It's your life and your career. I try not to preach in the guides, but one thing is certain - business is getting more and more like sports. There is always a new crop of younger and highly skilled kids entering the workforce looking to take your job. This year, it's you. But from now on, you'll have to maintain and increase your skills if you want to keep your job, to say nothing of getting promoted.
