ping
Did I miss something, or is Wal-Mart trading at $47?
snip:
Joe Cowan, president and chief executive of Cowan Systems LLC in Halethorpe, said he would hire at least 30 drivers for his trucking company at "$50,000-plus salaries," but he can't find any.
A quarter of the Restaurant Association of Maryland's members say labor issues such as finding good workers are their primary concern. A quarter of the state's small businesses have job openings, an increasing share, according to the latest poll by the National Federation of Independent Business's NFIB Research Foundation.
Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore, which every year creates about 500 jobs and hires about 2,000 workers, is dealing with shortages on both ends of the spectrum of needed skills: pharmacists and other highly trained personnel on the one hand, and jobs such as cooks and laboratory technicians on the other.
"The demand is outstripping the supply much more now than it did five years ago, 10 years ago," said Pamela Paulk, vice president of human resources at the Johns Hopkins Hospital and Health System.
Of course, Japanese engineers make good money, so these companies won't bother. It's just a matter of wanting to pay less, not a lack of skilled people.
There's a simple solution. Let the Department of Labor set the immigration quotas based on job skills.
Boom times, jobs are plentiful? Open the doors (but you leave your fingerprints, retinal scan and a DNA sample when you come through the door, thank you very much.) Recession, jobs are scarce? Sorry, no more immigration until things pick up. That's life.
There's another factor here, also. Why should anyone bust their hump at a menial job when welfare benefits are so generous? Go on the dole, work a little 'under the table' and spend your carefree days sleeping, fishing, watching TV, surfing the 'net, making babies, etc. etc.
For 200 years this country prospered without Free Trade agreements with third world countries. Now all of a sudden our economy will collapse without them, give me a break. Only the honest globalists/Free Traders will admit it's about that large pool of cheap labor corporations want to tap, nothing else.
Well, it looks like George W. Bush eliminated the worker surplus. And the elite liberals don't like it!
This is by far one of the most misleading (if not completely mendacious) statement I've seen on this topic in quite some time. "According to mainstream economic theory"? Commodities go through long term shortages and surpluses all the time.
Frankly, you are starting to look like the Internet version of the guy that stands on the street corner with the handwritten cardboard sign declaring "The End of the World is Coming".
Sounds exactly like Bill and Hill.
What person in their right mind will go into tech anymore just to see their career outsourced to India, Malaysia, Costa Rica, or etc.?
No problemo. George W. and Vincente have it covered. Another 30 million illiterate Mexicans + Free Viagra will fill the void in no time ;-)
Ouch!
Instead, they face a shortage of workers willing to accept the paltry wages they have been offered. How paltry? The latest figures from the U.S. Department of Labor show that after peaking in1978 – yes, 28 years ago, inflation-adjusted wages for manufacturing workers have fallen back to levels they first hit in 1972.
bump
How do employers reconcile offering low wages in a worker "glut", but claim they can't find "skilled" workers (willing to work for their low wages) and need cheap foreigners during a worker "shortage"? And, how is it that firms can outsource jobs overseas while claiming they cannot find skilled workers here? Are they really more skilled than American workers, or just cheaper?
They had been demanding 10 years experience in programming PLC software that just came out in 2002!
They aren't kidding anyone (except maybe the politicians that they want to have bring in more H1Bs).
It's still very much a buyer's market out there.