Posted on 08/24/2014 6:54:55 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
More corporate propaganda to justify more immigration. We have a surplus of labor, skilled and unskilled. The indicator. Wages are going down not up. In fact, wages have been going down in real terms since 1969.
Yeah, but they know how to put on a condom.
The US has got to get serious about developing a generation of competent adults who have a work ethic and who want to take personal responsibility. Every generation has a good percentage of such people -- but, overall, our system seems less and less capable of producing the people we need. We have to fix our system -- and Common Core isn't helping.
So a kid with a 200,000 education is too unskilled to get a 0-100k job but an illegal sneaking over the border has the skills?
Why is it so hard to fill these jobs?
Too many potheads.
The one item in the article that isn't relevant to this discussion is the shortage of qualified truck drivers. There are many factors tied to that problem that have nothing to do with the labor force or the qualifications of workers.
I do agree that we have a "surplus of labor" in some respects. A big part of the problem is that we have an excess supply of workers in fields that really don't need them (lawyers, for example). One of the positive things that may happen in a period of long-term economic stagnation is that young people might sit back and take a good hard look at their career options before they pursue a career where they end up as just another one of hundreds of thousands of people whose skills and knowledge simply aren't needed.
In those states making marijuana legal, do employers in those states still get to screen for drugs? A person smokes legal weed and becomes unemployable for a whole range of jobs. And then, of course, the worker problem becomes worse and you need more immigrants. It is almost like a conspiracy. Also, how many companies will flee states where drug use is legal?
It's easier to find these competent adults in other countries. That's part of what is driving this whole issue.
One comment was that a long haul trucker making $50K has to spend $20K a year to live on the road (with all the attendant hardships).
Workers can lead Unless it is surgery or rocket science, most jobs can be productive from day one, even if not optimally so.
The kid with the $200,000 education isn’t competing with the illegal sneaking over the border.
If you ask an incompetent adult to become competent, you don’t win the popularity contest.
I can attest to the youth having terrible work ethic I can’t tell you how many youth seem to have an expectation of being valued because they breath.
When I was at a state unemployment office we’d routinely send people who didn’t have a lot of skills a few blocks away to a large, industrial bakery paying a bit over $10/hr to start with good overtime & benefits (this was in the 90’s when that was decent money) but 2/3rds of them would fail the drug screening.
That’s part of it, but that only applies to the over-the-road segment of the industry. The trucking industry is slowly moving towards a business model based on shorter hauls for most loads. Part of this is driven by the “shortage” of drivers, but rising fuel costs are a big factor as well.
I know a guy who owns a tile business. He pays $10/hour to unskilled labor which is high hereabouts. He can’t keep employees. The largest cause is they get DUI’s and lose their driver’s license. Some won’t show up after he pays them until they run out of money. They are unreliable. Some are functionally illiterate and can’t do simple math. There’s nobody he can just leave on a job alone and expect the job to get done. When he does get somebody good, he teaches them what they need to know and they go off and get a higher paid job. (Can’t blame them. But good workers are hard to find and other companies have deeper pockets than he does.)
I went in to look at my house when it was being built in early ‘95. The crew were smoking joints and drinking malt liquor. I mentioned this to the contractor. He sighed and said, “We fire them when we catch them. But it’s so hard to find help we don’t try too hard to catch them.”
Our politicians seem to say "let's import foreigners; screw the American citizens".
That's a pretty amazing approach for our elected officials to take.
It is true, though, that we have a skills gap and people aren’t doing much to increase their worth to the employers in many cases, since UI, SNAP, SSDI, Workers Comp and all the rest are so easy to get these days.
Stoners, sluts and other parasites.
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