We have too many unskilled people (the brighter ones need to be taught skills) and college graduates who don't want to run a lathe, say, or fix HVAC systems, but not skilled workers.
That can be fixed if the educations system forgets about 'women's studies' and 'black studies', re-emphasizes vocational training.
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.
“That can be fixed if the educations system forgets about ‘women’s studies’ and ‘black studies’”
If any good comes from this era, the 20-somethings who are doing post-graduate Xbox studies in M+P’s basement with their degrees in political science will have long, long memories. I will too, because as of now, I am paying to insure them.
In a way, I feel sorry for them, because studies have shown time and again that it is very, very difficult to ever recover from starting on the ladder low or late, and these days, those are just about the only two options.
I think that the “soft” (and I mean soft, as in limp) studies are going to undergo a very hard correction. I predict an abrupt end to college-level courses such as “1970’s Culture Reflected in Situation Comedies”.