Posted on 08/24/2014 6:54:55 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
America has a deficit of workers. Willing workers. Capable workers. Skilled, or at least semi-skilled workers, who can do a job and do it well. There are at least one million jobs that go begging day after day if only employers could find workers to fill them.
This probably seems hard-to-believe. After all, how can America have a worker shortage when we have about 18 million Americans who are unemployed or underemployed? When the real unemployment rate is 12 percent?
Well certainly the economy isn’t creating nearly as many jobs as it should – in large part because of regulatory and tax restraints on hiring workers. Obamacare’s anti-employment impact, including the rule that caps employment at 50 workers or less at many firms to avoid the law’s higher costs, is just one example of a law that adds to unemployment lines.
But there are also millions of unemployed Americans who don’t have the skill sets to match what employers are in need of. To make matters worse, a lot of these frustrated job searchers have college degrees that are about as marketable as the paper diploma they are written on.
So what kind of jobs are going unfilled?
* Manufacturing – We always hear we are losing good manufacturing jobs in America and those bedrock middle class jobs aren’t coming back. Gregory Baise, the president of the Illinois Manufacturing Association, tells me that there are “some 500,000 jobs we can’t fill. It’s the biggest problem our industry faces.”. The industry needs welders, pipefitters, electricians, engineers. It needs people skilled in robotics and basic engineering.
* Trucking – At any time over the last several years there have been about 30,000 too few truckers to run long haul routes. The American Trucking Association tells me the number could be closer to 50,000. This is admittedly a tough and high-stress job with lots of time away from friends and family. But they are jobs that pay $50,000 and up, and a lot more than that with overtime.
* Energy – Bloomberg reports that “Gulf Coast oil, gas and chemical companies will have to find 36,000 new qualified workers” by 2016. Many energy towns have unemployment rates of less than 3 percent – in other words, there’s a worker shortage.
These aren’t menial or “dead end” jobs. They typically pay between $50,000 and $90,000 a year and with benefits the compensation can climb to $100,000. That’s rich in most nations.
Bob Funk, CEO of Express Employment Professionals, one of the nation’s largest temporary employment agencies located in Oklahoma City, places more Americans into jobs than just about anyone. With nearly half-a million hires a year he tells me, he can find a job for “any American with a strong work ethic and can pass a drug test.” He also estimates that the worker shortage – those with skills to fill available jobs – “is at least one million and probably higher than that.”
Why is it so hard to fill these jobs?
One reason is the curse of the so-called “skills mismatch.” American workers with high school or even college degrees just aren’t technically qualified to do the jobs that are open. This is a stunning indictment of our school system at all levels considering that all in parents and taxpayers often invest as much as $200,000 or more in a child’s education. We’re not turning our kids into competent workers.
Some governors like Mike Pence of Indiana have moved to make vocational education more standard in the Hoosier State. It’s a great idea and it’s a start.
But this won’t solve the whole problem because many companies are already willing to offer 3 to 6 months on the job training for trucking and manufacturing jobs. They will teach them men and women how to operate the machinery, the computers, and the scientific equipment. These aren’t sweatshop jobs.
Mr. Funk cites figures that more than half of the applicants for these kinds of jobs in the temporary job market can’t pass a drug test. “They are unemployable in that case,” he says regretfully.
Then there is the issue that these jobs don’t get filled because the work lacks glitz and glamour.
Too many Americans have come to view blue collar jobs or skilled artisan jobs as beneath them.
Contributing to this attitude is the wide availability of unemployment insurance, food stamps, mortgage bailout funds and other welfare. Taking these taxpayer handouts is somehow seen as normal and a first, not a last resort. One owner of a major trucking company told me last year, “drivers who get laid off don’t come back until their unemployment benefits run out.” This is documented by research from my colleagues at the Heritage Foundation who have found that “4 million Americans laid off in the recession faced effective marginal tax rates near or above 100 percent [because of welfare benefits], significantly reducing their attachment to the labor market.”
There’s no doubt America needs millions of more jobs. But we could put one million more people in jobs tomorrow if we get schools to train our kids with core competencies and if we could instill in Americans an old-fashioned work ethic. The only dead-end job is no job at all.
Too many potheads.
The reason they are potheads is because young men no longer have opportunity or even hope.
I don't blame them for giving up.
This country has sent its women to work, which is a disgrace, and which I am certain runs against our evolved human nature.
Men are no longer seen as leaders, men are no longer seen as heads of households.
Women, who started out holding an equal share of the cards by virtue of evolution, now have all their original natural rights supplemented by arrogating the natural rights of men.
Our nation has been sold out for the sake of profit. We have been in a race to the bottom for fifty or more years.
Ours is a social disaster, and people are behaving the way they did in all previous social disasters: by surrendering to immediate gratification--sex, intoxicants, mindless distractions, violent behavior--instead of working toward a better future for themselves, because they have every reason to believe that as long as present trends continue, their future will only be worse.
Not really. I work in Industrial Construction and Heavy Maintenance. We have a terrible time getting good welders, pipe fitters, lofting is almost a lost art...
We get high school graduates that can’t do basic math let alone the trig used in pipe and vessel lay out. I and others have had to teach them what the little lines between the numbers on a tape measure mean. They can’t do fractions that I learned in elementary school.
IMO, the wages are down due to the Fed inflating the currency. The higher than inflation ride in cost of healthcare and insurances has not helped either. These are mostly due to lack of real tort reform.
A family can survive without 4 cars, 5 television sets, a beach house and ordering takeout every night.
I don’t really believe my anecdotal evidence disagrees with your statistical evidence but it don’t tell the whole story.
When you have a big construction job in a less populated area, two thirds of the labor is pulled from local and nearby companies. A third, however, is hired “off the bank” to make up the full number needed. What I have seen is that local farm boys and guys from small towns can’t cut these tough jobs, or don’t want to, or are just unable to make the effort to do what is required. So, out of immigrant populations, often transient, a population that doesn’t comprise 5% of the available work force, those immigrants make up 75% of that 33% that are hired for the full volume of the project.
A project that takes a high number of people in various trades with a 150 man work force has had about 800 cycle through as the various trades are used. Out of that 800, 520 are that two thirds that are in the area and your figures indicate that up to 75% are immigrants and that is 315. However, out of the 280 that are hired from local unemployed a disproportionate amount come from immigrants that “are willing to do the work” — an additional 210 of the 280 hired locally.
Therefore out of the 280 hired local, only 70 end up being local guys out of the itinerant workforce in the area. The rest of locals stay on welfare because they will not do this type of work or when they try, they turn out to be unsuited.
Are there places where factories want to set up and pay 12.00 per hour, there sure are and to hell with them. However, we have a large part of our workforce that is unsuitable for work and the specifics of the stories tell us why where the statistics don’t.
Are you suggesting that the elimination of those programs would boost employment?
Yes, I am. It would do this in two ways: (1) it would remove a huge disincentive for many Americans to work; and (2) it would reduce the tax burden on American employers.
This gets to the heart of the issue right here. I contend that a carpenter working in NYC could afford his own home in a decent neighborhood, and could support a non-working wife and children -- just like he did fifty years ago.
One caveat, though, is that this carpenter would have to accept a standard of living that was the norm fifty years ago. That means an early 1960s-vintage car (if he even owns one), medical insurance that covers nothing more complicated than a broken arm, no cable TV, no cell phone, and no $250,000 undergraduate college education for his kids.
Oh -- and there's no Sloan-Kettering cancer treatment center or Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center, either.. If he is afflicted with anything like cardiovascular disease or cancer, he goes home and counts the weeks and days until he checks out.
They have nothing to worry about, it is people with limited capacity such as you who should worry.
That’s how it always starts. Eventually it turns into killing the Jews.
What are you saying? Do you want to kill Jews? I think there is something wrong with you.
There are an estimated 22 million foreign born in our workforce, 8 million of whom are illegal aliens. Yes, there are plenty of jobs held by both legal immigrants and illegal aliens that could be filled by an American. Give me one job that can't be filled by an American.
his analysis tests the often-made argument that immigrants do only jobs Americans don't want. If the argument is correct, there should be occupations comprised entirely or almost entirely of immigrants (legal and illegal). But Census Bureau data collected from 2009 to 2011, which allows for detailed analysis of all 472 separate occupations, shows that there were only a handful of majority-immigrant occupations. Thus, there really are no jobs that Americans won't do. Further, we estimated the share of occupations that are comprised of illegal immigrants, and found that there are no occupations in which the majority of workers are illegally in the country.
Of the 472 civilian occupations, only six are majority immigrant (legal and illegal). These six occupations account for 1 percent of the total U.S. workforce. Moreover, native-born Americans still comprise 46 percent of workers even in these occupations.
We find that there are no occupations in the United States in which a majority of workers are illegal immigrants. Illegal immigrants work mostly in construction, cleaning, maintenance, food service, garment manufacturing, and agricultural occupations. However, the overwhelming majority of workers even in these areas are native-born or legal immigrants.
When AZ implemented its tough laws requiring businesses to use E-verify, many of the jobs in the fast foods business came open and were filled by Americans. The same thing happened in Alabama. And there are many examples elsewhere.
The fast-food chain announced last week that it would hire 50,000 people around the U.S. – at least 1,000 in metro Atlanta – and job-seekers lined up at McDonald's Atlanta-area restaurants to vie for an opportunity.
At the Candler Road store in Decatur, more than 100 people were lined up to apply for jobs by 7 a.m. and, two hours later, more than 300 already had applied for positions as crew members and managers.
Yes, I am. It would do this in two ways: (1) it would remove a huge disincentive for many Americans to work; and (2) it would reduce the tax burden on American employers.
You fail to indicate how this would create jobs. What happens to the loss of revenue to businesses due to the elimination of food stamps? What happens to doctors and hospitals that no longer receive Medicaid payments? By law, hospitals must still treat patients who come into the ER. There are 80 million people on Medicaid. A significant number of them are in nursing homes and those numbers will increase as our population increases. Do you really believe we can eliminate Medicaid and food stamps? Where is the political will to do that?
What did taxpayers give to the 109,631,000 — the 35.4 percent of the nation — getting welfare benefits at the end of 2012?
82,679,000 of the welfare-takers lived in households where people were on Medicaid, said the Census Bureau. 51,471,000 were in households on food stamps. 22,526,000 were in the Women, Infants and Children program. 20,355,000 were in household on Supplemental Security Income. 13,267,000 lived in public housing or got housing subsidies. 5,442,000 got Temporary Assistance to Needy Families. 4,517,000 received other forms of federal cash assistance.
When those receiving benefits from non-means-tested federal programs — such as Social Security, Medicare, unemployment and veterans benefits — were added to those taking welfare benefits, it turned out that 153,323,000 people were getting federal benefits of some type at the end of 2012.
Businesses that are hiring illegal aliens are privatizing the profits and socializing the costs. Illegal aliens cost over $100 billion a year in just education, healthcare, and incarceration costs. And immigrants, legal and illegal, send over $123,273,000,000 in remittances from United States to other countries in 2012.
$123 trillion here and $123 trillion there and pretty soon we are talking real money!
This item in your response -- which is a classic illustration of Keynesian economics -- is exactly what is behind this push to flood the country with tens of millions of new immigrants.
These people aren't being brought here for their labor. They're being brought here to serve as "customers" for every industry and government agency that employs people in this country. In effect, they're being brought here to replace the 50+ million Americans we've killed off since Roe v. Wade.
There's no reason to lament the destruction of a nation that has done so much to cause its own demise.
LOL. I think that was supposed to be “billion,” but I guess y’all know that.
yes, but it’s funny.
Trillions and trillions served!
And bazillions more where that came from! LOL.
I've long said that the absence of 50+ million unborn children would create a gap in our economy that would be unfillable. That "gap" is 50+ million fewer TAXPAYERS funding things like medicare, medicaid and Social Security.
So now our stupid Government in its infinite wisdom (/sarc) has decided to fill that "gap" by bringing in low-skilled/unskilled uneducated immigrants from third world countries who will be net effect TAX TAKERS that will not contribute a single meaningful dollar to the economy.
Effing brilliant. (/sarcasm)
My charming and delightful wife is a stay at home mom and has been since our oldest son was three years old in 1999. Our two sons are now both in high school (sophmore and senior.) She's home until the youngest is out of high school and into college. There are ALOT of sacrifices to be made to have mom stay at home to make sure the kids are "kept in line" and brought up properly. Not everyone chooses to make that sacrifice and our society is OBVIOUSLY much worse off for it.
Mom staying at home means we drive older cars, don't take lavish vacations and don't have the "best of everything" but we have things that money can't pay for: two sons who are fine young men of character and integrity who do well in school, choose their friends wisely and don't get into trouble.
That's priceless.
The good news is that our fiscal house is in such terrible shape that they're likely to be "taking" from the holders of U.S. government bonds that will pay very little interest and probably won't end up getting paid off anyway.
You're watching a perfect case study of how an empire declines.
"Going Galt" is going to be a walk in the park for me.
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