The jobs tide threatens an American industrial tsunami (John Ratzenberger)

The Daily Caller ^ | January 31, 2011 | John Ratzenberger

[Will88]

He wasn't talking about high-paying jobs, but skilled work.

Yes they are talking about high paying jobs, or maybe what were once high paying jobs.

Many companies are literally begging workers to come on board, offering well-paying, high-skilled work and training just to stay afloat.

They specifically mention welding and construction. Welding was definitely once high paying work, as was much of construction. We know construction work pay has been undercut by illegal alien workers, and I've read of groups of Indian welders.

A real, in-dept study of this would turn up some causes not mentioned in this article. American kids learn what jobs pay well, and what jobs are being overtaken by illegals, and what jobs are being exported and outsourced, and they stay away from those occupations as much as possible.

And that estimate of 3 - 15 million is just a little hard to accept. Doesn't sound like much research went into arriving at that, or much else mentioned.

[mo]

Deregulate and detax...and watch the American job machine roar!!

[CPT Clay]

Bump

[Gen-X-Dad]

We have established a negative feedback loop for the future workers to learn the skills required to “build” stuff. Why put in the extra hours to learn these types of skills when the CEOs will just have you train the overseas labor force to do your job and then ship the factory out overnight? Until the government gives incentives (both positive and negative) to convince CEOs this is a bad way to run their business in America, the bleeding will continue. The more of this behavior they get rewarded for doing, the smaller the workforce that wants to gamble on this type of future, which then gives the CEOs more reason to accelerate gutting what’s left. Eventually they will succeed in doing it if nothing changes in the current state of affairs.

[count-your-change]

“The average age of a skilled worker in the U.S. is 55”

And when he is laid off he has has scant chance of finding another job. I asked the fellow who runs a little car lot what he did before the car lot. He was a skilled machinist and his entire company moved to Mexico and he wasn’t even invited, not that he’d go.

The article really is bunk.

[Red Badger]

They hired foreign engineers for a of couple reasons. First, they would work for less than an American would, and second, they filled a quota for their EEOC inspectors. A female foreign engineer would be a two-fer, and if she were dark skinned olive complexion, a three-fer.
At the time you mentioned, I had to hire a skilled metrology technician for the company I worked for at the time. I was told by HR that I had to hire a female, and preferably a minority. I interviewed several candidates, white males, who were all well qualified. I found one black female technician who was very minimally qualified at best. I had no choice but to go with her. She lasted a week until her drug test results came in. .....

[beaversmom]

Good luck to you on finding employment. My sense is that the left is promoting college and university for all young people and like everything else they promote there is a reason for it.

I don’t think Ratzenberger is saying there’s a problem with older workers, but he’s saying that young people learning trades are declining.

Mike Rowe seems to think there is a war on the blue collar workers too.

If you go to 15:00 in this video to the end of it he talks about some of his perspective on it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-udsIV4Hmc

at 19:20+ he talks about declining trade school enrollment

and from description of the video:

On Labor Day 2008, Mike launched a Web site called mikeroweWORKS.com, where skilled labor and hard work are celebrated in the hope of calling attention to the steady decline in the trades and bolstering enrollment in trade schools and technical colleges.

[JRios1968]

Y'know, it's a little known fact...

[TASMANIANRED]

Get rid of 70% of the colleges and all liberal arts degrees.

Trade schools starting at high school level.

Bring back home ec and shop classes.

[Nepeta]

In my experience, "competitive pay" in skilled jobs typically translates to "3-4 dollars more an hour than Wendy's" with greater responsibilities, pressure and stress, no employer loyalty--but the employee is expected to behave like nothing else matters but their job.

I don't mind working hard, even for thankless jackasses, but I do mind being expected to pretend to believe their lies.

And if you are over 50, expect to be treated like dirt.

[digger48]

ltr

[umgud]

It starts with kids. We must foster the love of tinkering and the self-reliance and creativity that come with it. The old “shop class” model has essentially disappeared. Let’s develop and promote hands-on learning at home and in schools.

Won't work in many places. Here in CA we have just north of 6 million K-12 students. Over half have no desire to be anything more than low skilled service workers, fruit pickers or gangbangers.

[SunkenCiv]

Cliff Clavin ping. Thanks beaversmom.

[beaversmom]

You’re welcome :)

[Chickensoup]

All the technical schools changed their names to colleges under some clinton mandate to increase college ed in this country.

[RayChuang88]

Want to see the American economy boom again? The answer is simple: MASSIVELY overhaul or even phase out the current income tax system.

When our current income tax system:

1) Has over 70,000 pages of regulation and additional rulings so complex that not even the IRS can figure it out.
2) Costs over $300 BILLION per year in compliance costs.
3) Discourages personal savings and capital investments staying in the USA.
4) Drives millions of jobs, thousands of factories and hundreds of corporate headquarters beyond US borders.
5) Drove around US$16 TRILLION in American-owned liquid assets to either the cash-only illegal underground economy or to offshore financial centers beyond US borders.

No wonder the US economy is rapidly failing. We need to overhaul our income tax system to at least what Steve Forbes proposed with his simple flat-rate income tax system or go even further and repeal the 16th Amendment in favor of the FairTax national consumption tax. Such a change would encourage Americans to keep their savings and capital investments in the USA (and encourage foreigners to invest in the USA), which would result in the next major economic boom.

[muawiyah]

In the 1980s and 1990s we had a massive movement of B-school graduates into middle management positions all over the place.

Most of them had done 4 or 5 years to get am undergraduate Business or Accounting degree and were all abysmally ignorant of what it takes to get a real degree in Arts and Sciences ~ it's far different.

Degrees in the other traditional divisions also suffered at their hands, particular engineers and folks in architecture (which has several major subdivisions).

The result was that you had hiring officers with MBAs who faced with a fellow with a Philosophy degree couldn't imagine that he was probably a near graduate level mathematician who simply couldn't catch the required course in topology only offered every 3 years. Instead, they'd hire on the Elementary Education graduate because they knew what that took ~

[beaversmom]

...overhaul or even phase out the current income tax system.

OMGoodness, I would love to see that. I was thinking about that the other day when I passed a small line of people waiting to see the Jackson Hewitt guy. What a convoluted mess that is our income tax system.

[Texas Fossil]

I spent 35 years in wholesale hardware distribution. Sales, sales management, retail store planning and ended up running the catalog department for the last distributor (print catalog, promotions & web catalog and images)

Worked for 2 privately held companies that length of time.

Rode down 1 division that closed and last year rode down the first company I started with in 1972, it was 106 years old. It died because the owner bought a similar company in CA and caught the “green” disease. Took the profits from the company I was last with and spent it on “intellectual property”. None of the businesses he started or bought made a profit except the distributor I was with and a coil manufacture he owned.

Finally 2 of the officers and all the salesmen except 2 left and went to work for a competitor. (I had previously worked for the competitor & they did not like that I would not sign a “no compete contract” before. They did not need me. They only bought the business (by hiring the salesmen). The company is being liquidated, I suspect by the bank.

Sad end for a fine company. The family who started that company had it 85 years. I spent 14+ years with them the first time and 5-1/2 the 2nd time. Almost 15 years with the competitor between them.

Friend of mine (he was the operations officer) told me, Dave your problem is that you simply do not understand the workings of “big business”. /sarcasm Problem is I do.

[Mariner]

In the tech business I cannot find enough people to implement VoIP, VMWare...troubleshoot a SAN or implement/troubleshoot an IP security infrastructure.

We're paying big bucks...up to $100/hr DOE and Skill.

Of all the people we have doing this today...not even ONE has a college degree. However, all have made lifetime study the basis of their living. And, all have 120+ IQ, can read and learn from that book.

We have customers beating down our door.