No Demand for Skilled Jobs: “Millions cannot find work because the jobs simply are not there”
Posted by UncommonSense 9 years, 2 months ago to Education
This is real news here. Ultimately, how do you think this engineered crisis will end? Either A) they'll go overseas to work or B) The college degree paper-mill~Federally funded industry will collapse or C) both will happen.
I think the breaking point is getting close. I wonder how many of the grads are actually John Galts who have decided to "Go Galt"?
I think the breaking point is getting close. I wonder how many of the grads are actually John Galts who have decided to "Go Galt"?
Why do you think there is all the talk from Obama about repatriotization of money? It's a red herring to avoid the real problem: corporate taxes. And the reality is that corporate taxes are a farce anyway - they just get passed along to the consumer ultimately or they impose unnecessary barriers to certain types of businesses.
I'd like to see all corporate taxes disappear.
And the Statists' solution: even more bureaucratic interventionism.
Absolutely brilliant!
Highest bucks for non-degreed folks today? Oil Rig Pipe Jockeys, among other similar 'dirty' jobs.
Everyone seems to want $15 an hour without having to break a sweat, get dirty or be polite to a customer.
Talk about fucking "moochers"!
Oh, and at my farewell party in June or so of 1978, with something like 30 or 40 attendees (a bit larger than our whole department's population) their going-away gift to me was a "Who Is John Galt" t-shirt, which I still have!
:)))))))))
I really think all the computer trades ought to go this way. Technology moves way too fast for an academic atmosphere to be effective, and employers don't want a geek with no practical experience except as a help-desk tech in the first place, which is an "apprentice" by any other name!
This is a telling and important stat. In db's first book, "The Decline and Fall of the American Entrepreneur: How Little Known Laws and Regulations Are Killing innovation," he shows that while he is all for cutting corp tax rates-that is not the key issue. Teh key issues are weakening of our patent system and the inability to raise capital for startups in the public sector because of laws like Sarbanes Oxley and related securities laws. ALL NET NEW JOBS CREATED SINCE 1972 COME FROM NEW BUSINESSES. The high tech businesses provide the high paying, high quality jobs-this is not about putting a Starbucks on every corner.
So (?). This statement is, at best, out of context with the article.
While reading it [the article], I am considering a comment: that my husband and I, both having multiple certificates and college units in technical fields but not degree'd, are entrepreneurial. We currently own two tech/skills oriented businesses, both est. in 2000. Though we occasionally consider it, the state we live in makes it too difficult to have employees. So we subcontract, including assisting like-minded entrepreneurial individuals to acquire their own business license. We are not interested in college degrees. We look for intelligence, common sense, and work ethic.
Our three sons, all with significant work experience, are currently pursuing technical degrees and intend to start their own businesses.
While, as the comments already posted indicate, there are a number of directions in which to take this thread: government structure & disincentive ie: taxes and regulations ; outsourcing ; automation ; service vs production ; Galtism vs restructuring government ; even social structure – that our sons and their friends are empowered by their observation of my husband and I in a team work relationship build our personal and business lives together…
I return to my original question “So (?)” - that an otherwise pertinent article end with:
"I think I know where the real gap is: According to Credit Suisse, if wealth were evenly distributed across every adult in America, each adult would have $301,140. "
My point is that the body of the article is pertinent to the title “No Demand for Skilled Jobs: Millions cannot find work because the jobs simply are not there”.
The statement "I think I know where the real gap is: According to Credit Suisse, if wealth were evenly distributed across every adult in America, each adult would have $301,140. "…. comes out of the blue. It is not pertinent to the previous content. It does appear to be a socialist progressive plug, oddly placed and not at all developed.
If I were to pursue another thread to this article, it would be found in my original description of my & my husband’s business model. We do not wait upon opportunity. We create it. And are always on the look-out for individuals who do, or are willing to do, the same.
I'm sure that some of the poor would become wealthy because they may have the drive but not the opportunity but I also think that it would be a very low percentage.
Maybe 25 or so years ago... let's see, I was in my early forties, so yes, that would have been about right... my manager came to me one Friday afternoon and said, "Alan, I really like how you do your job here... so responsive to your customers' needs and such... Can you suggest how I should choose new people for our department so I can get 'more people like you'?"
I told him I'd like to think about The Answer over the weekend, and he agreed.
Monday morning, he came to my desk and asked if I'd decided on The Answer.
"Yes," I replied, "and the answer is: Don't hire anyone under 40."
Virtually all of the New Hires couldn't do critical thinking, wanted to be CEO within five years of getting their MBA, thought they were God's Gift To Business and Industry and aside from not being able to construct a grammatically close-to-correct sentence, didn't give a rat's butt about actually serving their clients/customers. Gimme a paycheck and leave me alone.
Oh, Yes, there WERE a few, but the Average was well below that kind of attitude And Performance.
One guy demanded a Company Car along with a promotion, and the Corporate Policy was that Nobody At His Level Ever Got A Company Car. But he lobbied for it for years. Talk about Entitlement and mooching....
And his decision-making skills barely justified the promotion in the first place. Of course, we already had some second and third level managers with similar lack of skills, so he had mentors galore to emulate.
And the company has been 'downsizing to success' ever since.
Sad. But true.
Business schools & MBA programs don't teach how to be an entrepreneur and build a solid business. They train MANAGERS to fit into already-existing slots.
ENTREPRENEURIAL EVANGELISM on a mass scale.
We need churches of capitalism where people can go on Sunday and get their spirits fired up with encouragement, words of wisdom, stories of success, skills workshops, support for the downtrodden to get back up.
I see the problem in America and Europe as a lack of spirit. People have allowed their confidence to be crushed. Most McJob slaves could triplet their hourly revenue by starting up their own business, but for most, the McJob's demands leave them dazed and exhausted at the end of each week. They all feel alone, isolated, unsupported. But each has within them more than enough intelligence, power and creativity to succeed. If they had the right support, and enough regular examples of people rising from the same ranks into success, many would rise up themselves, and transform the economy.
We have every reason to expect a whole new economic renaissance! New technologies such as 3D printing and the growing Internet of Things are a huge tidal wave of prosperity about to break. Surf's up folks. Grab your boards and paddle out!!
Where do I sign up! Oh ya, I did. On Galt’s Gulch. It’s a start.
I fully agree that spirit has been [purposefully] crushed, in largest part by government interference with education as well as the economy. UncommonSense touches on mentoring above. My husband and I are endeavoring to empower youth and adults in our own sphere of influence, which eventually will be cumulative and exponential.
Though: “We have every reason to expect a whole new economic renaissance! New technologies such as 3D printing and the growing Internet of Things are a huge tidal wave of prosperity about to break…”
Is under very, very serious threat by Net Neutrality!
When you dial a phone number, you expect equal quality of service irrespective of which business you call. When you mail a parcel, you expect it to be handled the same regardless of whether you're sending it to IBM or Microsoft.
Without Net Neutrality, it is possible for one business to pay to slow down the internet traffic of its business rivals, and even block new entrants from coming into the industry, rather than competing on the more honest playing field of product performance, value for money, quality and timeliness of service and overall product enjoyment.
In Atlas Shrugged, if there had been a non-neutral net, then Orren Boyle could have used it to choke Rearden Steel out of the market, by spamming all his potential customers, by hijacking all his search query terms, by making the reardensteel.com website so slow as to be unreachable. Hank Rearden would not have even been able to reach Dagny Taggart to offer his goods.
Another protection Net Neutrality gives is to people who hold unpopular opinions. And that includes us here in the Gulch.
Give up Net Neutrality, and watch the looters come out and play. James Taggart will be partying like never before!
The internet was invented on the premise of neutrality, and for almost all its history, has honoured that principle. If neutrality were abolished, it would be similar to a highway which sets a 10miles/hour speed limit for cars driving to K-Mart and a 100miles/hour speed limit for cars going to Wal-Mart. It also increases the opportunity for businesses with more cash and inferior products to erect barriers against newer startups with superior products and less cash.
I strongly agree that government agencies on the whole are not to be trusted, but in this issue, the FCC (possibly despite itself) has actually got it right.
I am undecided on this issue. I really don't want to go back to the old days of having gate keepers to content. OTOH, I wonder if content gate-keepers are gone for good no matter what. Suppose NN goes away. What happens then? Do media companies effectively block startups and dissenting opinions? Or do people just plug into networks that agree to pass all traffic? Is it really the hardware which allows those packets to be forwarded easily that brought us the information age? (I'm a hardware engineer, so I'm biased in favor of hardware). If so, let them forward whatever packets they want or don't want. People will find a way to get the packets to people want them.
I am not arguing either way on Net Neutrality, BUT what you describe about the plain old telephone service (POTS) is going away. POTS will be gone in a few years. The era of NEBS dictating that a teenager's call to a friend gets the same "five nines" as a 911 center is disappearing.
Draconian regulations and oppressive taxes.
My observation of the past two decades of public education is that parents and children perceive ‘the school’ and the government as ultimate authorities, and concede to their policies, as I said, under threat of suspension/expulsion/this will go in your file for life. Thus the generational fear factor is born and perpetuated, by design… and you can extrapolate that out.
Fortunately for our boys, they had us and a handful of teachers who appreciated and encouraged the afore mentioned intelligence, creativity and individualism.
So, as mentioned in my previous reply, we endeavor to undermine that indoctrination of fear, and to empower youth and adults in our own sphere of influence, which eventually will be cumulative and exponential.
WE WILL NOT COMPLY!!!
One kid might see a parked SUV with a 'for sale' sign, and spend the $100 on cabs, cheap cellphone and internet cafe time to find a buyer, and end the day with $2000.
Another kid might find a promising busker, buy him coffee and a meal, and have him signed up to a record publisher and come away with a spotter's fee of $3500.
Another kid could see a scrap metal truck, and get inspired to build a website to create an efficient way to categorise each type of scrap, and efficiently reach buyers willing to pay 3 times as much as the smelters, and sell the site for $40k.
But don't even talk about doing stuff like this. We don't want kids to develop independent enterprising capability now, do we? :P
It surely keeps the slaves in line!
If I ever get to 100 comments here I suppose I'll be able to give you that Thumbs Up!
Please, if you can, stay with it. I have found the Gulch a rewarding and interesting place to be, with real people I can truly interact with. I hope that you will find, as I did, that there really is a Galt's Gulch and we are really there.
Yes!
Some service jobs pay well, but the majority do not.
We went from the top manufacturer in the world to the top consumer. (with exceptions in some niches of course)
All we offer now to most of the world is an appetite, and anyone can provide that.
Next I was downsized out of a very well-paying job that I liked, the tech industry was pretty much collapsing, we went from consulting rates of over $100 an hour for even basic stuff to something like $20 & $30 and it didn't make sense, so I started a real estate company (without knowing much about it other than basic financials) and went on to employ 170 people. I didn't have 20 cents to rub together either for capital on either of those business startups but both were worth over a million dollars at some point.
After running businesses for 12 years, I'm now VERY valuable and am very highly compensated for running a division of a military contractor. Do I attribute my degree to that? No, not really. Do I attribute my military experience? Maybe 30% of it, the discipline yes, but sweeping up hydro fluid in an aircraft hangar wasn't really a preparation for cyber security. Running a business, managing people, selling, and the "Will-Do" attitude is what my personal success is.
Most of these people think that getting a degree is the magic bullet... no.. its not. It's a piece of a puzzle that you have to fit together, and I'll add that the snotty types that claim the 'school of hard knocks' is their education, are also a bunch of fools when interviewed. If education didn't mean anything, Africa and Mexico would be full of millionaires.
It's a leg to a 3-legged stool, but without one, the stool tips over. If I ask a non-educated but 'skilled' technician to write a technical solution proposal for a cyber security project, I'm going to get a pile of garbage that wouldn't work for recycled Christmas wrap. But if I ask that same task of someone with a bachelors or masters, with a lot of experience, and experience selling, I'm going to get something that might be useful.
Same argument, the pure-science degrees that are being pushed these days lack the communication skills of the English Literature minor or something that used to be popular. Now the candidates struggle there too.
Ask the typical graduate if they would consider a career in sales, and about 90% of them will say "no way"... why? Because they want to be paid for sitting at a desk somewhere. Without acknowledging that NO BUSINESS survives without sales, and none of them thrive without a very integrated and very competent sales strategy and ability to bring a product or service to market.
Have I bored you yet? Yes, I'm sure I have... but its God's honest truth. This is all a myth being pushed by academia, which themselves, don't understand sales, or strategy, or technical innovation.. if they did, they wouldn't be soaking up that county-level Govie' k-12 job and parking their butt waiting for the pension to pay out.
We don't have a crisis of education, education is educating just fine. We have a lack of society to teach survival skills... we have assumed that we have already mastered the universe. That the basics of selling a product for $3.00 that it cost you $1.00 to make is much better than selling a service from a professional that you pay $120,000 a year to for $45 an hour probably isn't going to keep you in business very long...
I suggest you read the "Dear Hillary letter" ~ link is provided for your convenience: http://www.eagleforum.org/educate/marc_t...
Otherwise, I enjoyed the reading.
The problem is the shift that happened somewhere, probably with the huge success of the economy in the 90s, that hard work and self-reliance were no longer important, or even talked about in school... All you needed was your degree and your problems are solved. Probably about the time that it was decided that having 'winners' and 'losers' isn't 'fair' to people that are trying really hard (but still suck at what they are doing).
When I was in school, in the 70's/80's, I grew up in the midwest, and basically, if your parents were farmers (self-employed) or government employees, you were pretty well-off. For everyone else, if you didn't own the place you were working at, you made minimum wage or barely above it. There was no such thing as a 'well paying' W2 job. So everyone I know either went into the military, went to college, both (as I did) or both and started a business besides that because having a lot of experience and an education, but still fixing copiers or something for minimum wage was a waste of time - you had to own the copier dealership or whatever.
The other huge learning experience of running your own business, is managing the money... you realize very quickly that a landslide of revenue today, is not an indicator of what will be there tomorrow, so even if you make a ton of cash above your budget, you never go out and blow it because you still have to make payroll next week and the week after, whether or not you make your numbers those weeks - if you don't have it, you are cashing out a credit card or a home equity line or something. "I don't have it" isn't an option that the employees or the government are willing to accept.
If I didn't have a job for a week, I figured out what kind of business I could start and create something for myself.
I can't fathom sitting at home on my @ss for 110 weeks of unemployment or whatever.
I have a sister-in-law that has an environmental studies degree (akin to underwater basket weaving), is 29, and has never actually had a job before. All she has ever done was be the Easter bunny or Santa's little helper for seasonal photography crap in the mall. She applies for every government job opening she can find, and truthfully, thats probably the max that her work ethic could muster anyway, but is seemingly dismayed that no one calls her for an interview (because at 29, living at home with mom & dad, and never having a job before... yeah... I can paint a pretty good mental picture too).
I've told her 1000 times to go get a McDonalds job, and figure out how to get up in the morning for it, then start working on looking for something else. She can't possibly imagine doing something as menial as that... oh well, whatever. Not my problem. Her parents are in their 70's and in poor health, I'm fine with kicking her out of the house and selling it when they die, she can get whatever her cut is and advice to drive to North Dakota and get a job in the oil fields or something, but whenever that cash in her hand is gone, she's homeless.
Amazingly, you can make as much 1099 and business income as you want and still collecting unemployment. At one point I was making $4,000/mo in business income, not counting investment income, but I was still open to a high-paying W-2 job if I could find one. I told them this, and they said was allowed to collect the $1500/mo benefit. I took it. Then I started making $15k/mo, and I told them I couldn't honestly say I would take a W-2 job if I found one, so I indicated that on the form. (Some months I make zero; I'm not rich.) They were surprised I was so honest, and said if I ever was interested in W-2 work again, I could tell them and the benefits would start coming again.
“I have a sister-in-law that has an environmental studies degree (akin to underwater basket weaving), is 29, and has never actually had a job before. All she has ever done was be the Easter bunny or Santa's little helper for seasonal photography crap in the mall.”
These people are difficult to deal with. Kudos for trying. The best bet is to get her talking about her dream work. Maybe it's something with acting or studying the environment. To get that dream, the first step might be working in fast food, or maybe it's sweeping the floors at an environmental engineering company or a company that produces ad videos. Maybe some of the people she meets with think of her a peon, but if she thinks of herself as a hardworking problem-solver, someone who she meets, probably someone in the industry she's interested in, will see that. Even if they don't the energy she gets from doing something will be helpful when she goes into an interview for a dream job.
All this is hard to do when. It may be two years to her dream job, which feels like forever when you're doing a crap job. When I did this, some days I'd have visions of growing old doing the crap job. That's an illusion though. You couldn't stay in the same job, even a crap job, for years even you wanted to, if you're aggressively trying new things.
When I see people like her, though, I think maybe they have a depression problem or maybe they're lazy. You can't make them excited to try something new.
It's really quite amazing. I broke down and agreed to let her say here the last 9 months of her college years so she could finish and the deal was, she go into the military afterward. With 3 or 4 months to go, I was telling her "you better go see the recruiter, it can take 6 months"... and she basically responded by eating a tub of ice cream every day so she couldn't meet the weight standards and then pretty much didn't have any intention of moving (until my wife kicked her out on the deadline).
The common thread I always see (and I actually ask it when I interview people), my wife and I are each the oldest in our families, we had to take care of the younger ones while our parents worked and very quickly had to enter the workforce ourselves. My wife's first job was actually in the fields in California at 7 years old with her parents in the summer to help earn money for tuition for the parochial school she went to.
She's also the trustee of her parents estate, and has begun selling real estate off recently to pay for her father's care (Parkinson's / mid-stage dementia / strokes). The younger ones are crying foul that the family's rental properties are "their father's legacy"... and no acknowledgement that when he is taking in $5000 a month basically, and going through $8500 a month in caregiver expenses, and down to around $60,000 in cash, something has to be done... (the maintenance on a rental house can suck that up quickly with a roof or heating/air issue and these are all old houses/duplexes).
None of the younger ones have ever seen the real legacy of their father - he came to America with a 6th grade education, put each of his 6 kids through private school and most have a college degree and a profession (civil engineering, construction management, etc.). With the exception of the 2 or 3 oldest ones that worked in the fields when they were young, the youngest ones have only looked at their parents like an ATM machine. One of them is a civil engineer and hit up his father every November like clockwork for the last 12 years for a loan for Christmas presents. He makes $150,000 a year, but would soak his $60,000 elderly father for a loan that he would rarely (if ever) pay back in full.
My younger siblings are not nearly that bad, but they all didn't see a reason with "always" letting my parents pay at dinner into their adulthood, heck, my brother has 4 kids and if he and his wife join my mom for dinner, he's always to let her pay (for herself and the 6 of them). Very odd.
So in interviews, I always ask if they have brothers or sisters... and if they do, are they the oldest, middle, or youngest.
My suggestion is to minimize time spent with the potential heirs. It's better to politely decline to talk moochers than to try to interact with them and reform them, at least if they're this bad. My thought is to take time whenever possible to get away from the family clown car, i.e. little vacations with no discussion of it. This goat rodeo is actually a common scenario with estates.
http://gustafsonlegal.blogspot.com/2014/...
The irrational behavior over the estate is a recapitulation of childhood disputes. Unless the people involved want to go to therapy or something, nothing good will come from it. It'll get you thinking negatively and spoil positive things going on. Very limited but cordial contact is best, IMHO.
Sorry, but this article is very much misleading and thus totally misses the mark.
Within a truly free market, wages are determined by supply and demand, that most-basic tool of economics. Ours is no longer a free market, and wages are set be government decree... the decree of your Rulers... and NOT by free market competition.
There is always plenty of work to be done, and thus always jobs for those who believe in jobs as the responsible way. Because your Rulers have interfered with the free market for Labor, it has been priced out of the market, which is the reason so many of America's industries have moved their businesses to other countries.
Another factor is the continuing inflation which runs rampant because of the Fiat Dollar.
This is really quite simple, If only the author could see that!
I have come to the realisation that the Moslem threat has become such an extreme issue is because they are effectively being employed as an army against the people wanting to maintain their lives of freedom.
Jan
You may be correct in saying YOUNG Americans have a negative attitude towards business, but keep in mind, those that do are often coming from the squishy background of liberally arts...NOT engineering.
Regarding mentoring: I have mentored many junior-level systems and budding security engineers ~ it's a part of the culture (not necessarily mandated by corporate values), but rather ingrained among those of us who served in the military and also its' the right thing to do. (Got integrity?)
Lastly, regarding the removal of willfully ignorant, stupid, demoralizing & unproductive Americans from the workplace: that's easier than you think...unless you're a member of a Union or a gov't worker then you are correct.
that particular gerund were supposed to be used
on the Internet.---Still, I don't have a h--l of a lot of
respect for college degrees. I decided not to be
conned into going to a four-year college. Instead,
I have been repeatedly conned into taking tech
courses, which don't get me a job. A machine
shop course in the same complex with my old
high school, which purported to teach milling
machine, drill press, and lathe; there was no
milling machine, I don't remember anything a-
bout a drill press, and I got only one crack at
the lathe. I passed that course, however, for
what it was worth (zero). Plus a keypunch course, which never got me a keypunch job
(by the way, when you take a course, make
sure it isn't in running a soon-to-be obsolete
machine); and an IST100 computer course,
which I passed, but which did not enable me to
do Word, Excel, or anything of that nature (it
may have been because I was relying on a
second-hand book I bought from a fellow stud-
dent). Of course, there is that Radioman course
in the Navy, which is worth zero for getting a
civilian job. I just want to go back and get re-
venge on the people who forced education
down my throat when I was a kid.
"plusaf > ... Ah, Joe Lizak... would you please elaborate a bit on what "free" means in your comment above?
My understanding is that Nothing Is Free... if a product or service is offered or consumed, SOMEONE, somewhere, has PAID for it. Maybe in taxes; maybe in a direct cash (or credit) transaction.
So if a Community College offers "free" education to someone (or anyone) who wants it, does the College get a 100% exemption from all property taxes on their land and buildings? Do ALL of the teachers and admins pay NO Income Tax on their wages?
Oh, wait! Their Wages!... Where does THAT money come from?
And if you even Think of Saying "the government", you have So Totally lost the argument/discussion, it's just too embarrassing for even me to continue...
Cheers... Now go think it over.
Thanks..."
In the skilled manual trades -- stone masons, brick masons, cement masons, framing carpenters, finish carpenters, cabinetmakers, boilermakers, welders, steel riggers, electricians, plumbers, plasterers, glazers, excavators (not ditch diggers), graders capable of providing finish grading to match designed contours, surveyors, auto mechanics, pipefitters, toolmakers, machinists, etc. -- there are few trained in these skills available for the jobs. These jobs require not just manual skill but the geometric and trigonometric ability to do the required calculations to set up the work.
We need trade schools. Those are far and few between. We have kids coming out of high school who can barely read and print (they don't learn to write any more) and who can't spell and calculate. They have sort of an understanding of the theory of math, but can't multiply, add, subtract, and divide in their heads without resort to a calculator -- and don't understand how to do it on paper. We have kids coming out of colleges with BA, BS, MA, and MS degrees with their heads filled with esoteric knowledge that is good to have, but without the practical skills needed for the work environment and with unrealistic job expectations.