The McJob...The New Normal.

[Mr Nice]

Silverado12,

Union membership (excluding government employment) is slowly dwindling in the USA.

If you get a chance, read: Daily Job Cuts . com

 

[OVERKILL]

Originally Posted By: Silverado12


Man, that all sounds good in theory, but in reality not everybody can become a doctor, engineer, etc. Also, you cannot tell that a product is made in China just by the price. Take electronic items like the iphone, for example. That dang thing is expensive! How much more if anything would it be to make it here? So much for low skill jobs being offshored. Electronics is very high tech. I guess we just have to figure out as a country which industries we want to let go. Don't think someone from another country can't do your job either. No one is so special that they can't be replaced by someone/thing cheaper. All this sounds good until it's you eating your own [poop to survive. That's why we need tariffs/unions/wage protection. We should set the high standard. What I'm getting at is some people work very hard for very little. It's not just warehouse work or fast food either.


Exactly. Not everybody is equipped to do the high skilled jobs, there are many whose skill/ability doesn't extend much beyond being able to successfully put the cap on the widget in 10 seconds or less. That is their ceiling; the scope of their ability as a productive member of society. When the people that fit in that category no longer have jobs, what happens? Well, they live off my tax dollars, they live off your tax dollars, or they become criminals. Or sometimes they do both. The fact of the matter is that they don't go away; you do not dictate the intelligence curve of society just by saying we provide highly skilled labour. That doesn't change the minimum IQ level of the country. And in fact what has seemed to be a growing trend in response to all the low skilled outsourcing is that these people, forced out of work, end up in community housing and they BREED. They've got nothing better to do right? They grow pot, live on Welfare and pop out babies like it is going out of style because the more kids they've got, the more money they get.

There are a lot of things that are fine in theory and don't fair so well in application. This seems to be one of those things. Whether we need more Engineers or not; whether we need more physicians, scientists...etc is irrelevant to the fact that there is a significant chunk of the population who literally CANNOT do those things; cannot be those people. Trav discussed this in depth in another thread regarding Germany's approach to this issue with a school system that quickly figures out what a kid is going to be able to DO, and then channels their skills in that direction. Identifying that everybody is NOT equal and dealing with each child/student as an INDIVIDUAL with individual strengths and weaknesses and catering to that is a huge evolution in education. That is something they clearly do better than us IMHO, and as a Canadian, with three children currently in our school system, I have no problem admitting that.

 

[javacontour]

According to Mike Rowe, about 3 million jobs are going unfilled because employers can't find tradesmen to fill them.

http://profoundlydisconnected.com/

Originally Posted By: LT4 Vette
Originally Posted By: javacontour
As long as we have people, we'll need infrastructure. Check out Mike Rowe Works. There are many jobs in the trades that go unfilled because folks think they need to go to college instead of going to trade school to learn a trade.


Unfilled trades like ???

 

[Dallas69]

I thought you were a cop?

 

[Silverado12]

Originally Posted By: OneEyeJack
Worry not. The government will solve this problem just like they did with healthcare. What could possibly go wrong? The government is here to take care of you. Now that jobs in aerospace, manufacturing, gas/oil are gone these minimum wage jobs will be the future.


The government was influenced by the multinationals when they changed trade policy. It benefits a few importers and VIPs at the expense of everyone else. The gov't should protect the majority of the citizens, not just the privileged few. It should be looking at ways to create more jobs here. Just having a surplus of labor will drive wages down (the evidence is all these jobs not paying anything).

 

[KzMitch]

Originally Posted By: Silverado12
Originally Posted By: OneEyeJack
Worry not. The government will solve this problem just like they did with healthcare. What could possibly go wrong? The government is here to take care of you. Now that jobs in aerospace, manufacturing, gas/oil are gone these minimum wage jobs will be the future.


The government was influenced by the multinationals when they changed trade policy. It benefits a few importers and VIPs at the expense of everyone else. The gov't should protect the majority of the citizens, not just the privileged few. It should be looking at ways to create more jobs here. Just having a surplus of labor will drive wages down (the evidence is all these jobs not paying anything).




“Any man who thinks he can be happy and prosperous by letting the government
take care of him better take a closer look at the American Indian.”


― Henry Ford

 

[Mr Nice]

I seriously doubt 3 million tradesmen type jobs are unfilled, I simply don't believe Mike Rowe's numbers are accurate.

 

[cashmoney]

Bottom line is the world has gotten much smaller and way more integrated and there is no turning back the clock on that trend. The economic competition for jobs that pay an above average wage is a lot harder than it was 40,30,20,10 years ago. And that completion keeps getting tougher over time as globalization increases. No amount of Regs, policy, tariffs etc. is going to stop that trend in the long run.

The cold hard truth is that folks that are smart, hard working, well organized, and highly motivated can still get ahead of the competition but the folks who are less so in those areas will suffer and fall behind. Nothing is going to change this reality. In the NA/Europe the last century produced enormous technology and productivity increases and for a time this produced above average wages for large population groups in those regions. Those days are over.

Governments and communities that invest in creating a highly educated, highly technical workforce will prosper and those that fail to do so will suffer. There is no stopping this trend, and no turning it back.

 

[Cutehumor]

Originally Posted By: eljefino
Originally Posted By: cashmoney
$10/hr jobs exist because there is tremendous excess supply of workers that have no high value skills. [...] So the way for US workers to earn higher labor rates/salary in today's world economy is to EARN it by first developing high value skills, investing in building high value skills and then working hard maintaining and improving them over your career.


That's a great pep talk but who has a crystal ball to see what the next career will be that gets offshored? There are lots of US engineers that were idled when their jobs get sent to India/ Singapore, for example. Why should high school kids excel in math/science when this career path got highjacked?

When your pay is above average, your head is sticking up pretty high in the game of whack-a-mole called life.

I wonder how they're going to undercut nursing, frankly.


Nursing jobs won't be undercut. the baby boomers are getting older and need healthcare. the only way to undercut nursing jobs, start up the death panel talks again. if no elderly, no nurses. problem solved.

 

[Silverado12]

Originally Posted By: KzMitch
Originally Posted By: Silverado12
Originally Posted By: OneEyeJack
Worry not. The government will solve this problem just like they did with healthcare. What could possibly go wrong? The government is here to take care of you. Now that jobs in aerospace, manufacturing, gas/oil are gone these minimum wage jobs will be the future.


The government was influenced by the multinationals when they changed trade policy. It benefits a few importers and VIPs at the expense of everyone else. The gov't should protect the majority of the citizens, not just the privileged few. It should be looking at ways to create more jobs here. Just having a surplus of labor will drive wages down (the evidence is all these jobs not paying anything).




“Any man who thinks he can be happy and prosperous by letting the government
take care of him better take a closer look at the American Indian.”


― Henry Ford



The gov't is sure taking care of the folks who throw the most money at it.

 

[Silverado12]

Originally Posted By: LT4 Vette
I seriously doubt 3 million tradesmen type jobs are unfilled, I simply don't believe Mike Rowe's numbers are accurate.




My son is a machinist, and he's doing pretty well considering he just graduated last year from trade school (at the local comm college). He def has a strong work ethic like his old man. I just worry about his future and that of others who can't complete trade school. There just has to be something to keep them out of poverty pay.

 

[eljefino]

Originally Posted By: OVERKILL


Exactly. Not everybody is equipped to do the high skilled jobs, there are many whose skill/ability doesn't extend much beyond being able to successfully put the cap on the widget in 10 seconds or less. That is their ceiling; the scope of their ability as a productive member of society. When the people that fit in that category no longer have jobs, what happens? Well, they live off my tax dollars, they live off your tax dollars, or they become criminals. Or sometimes they do both. The fact of the matter is that they don't go away; you do not dictate the intelligence curve of society just by saying we provide highly skilled labour. That doesn't change the minimum IQ level of the country. And in fact what has seemed to be a growing trend in response to all the low skilled outsourcing is that these people, forced out of work, end up in community housing and they BREED. They've got nothing better to do right? They grow pot, live on Welfare and pop out babies like it is going out of style because the more kids they've got, the more money they get.


Yes but we've allowed ourselves to be so marginalized we think we can somehow put everyone who's below average on a boat to a leper colony.

The Post Office used to use pens that were assembled by the blind. Sure, they probably could have gotten cheaper pens elsewhere. But we as a society thought it was worthwhile.

Now we're attacking this very same post office for being inefficient, hiring "lazy" employees, not funding a pension through some discriminatorily arcane process, etc.

Look closely at minimum wage law. To be inelegant, mentally disabled people can make sub-minimum wage under carefully controlled circumstances. Goodwill is the only operation I know of, but they have "unemployable" folks being paid piecemeal to sort clothes from rags.

The world is shades of gray... each to his ability and all that. One may be a mix of giver and moocher, despite AM radio rhetoric trying to ostracize him for not having adequate bootstraps. We as a society pick and worship some infinitesimally small career path for our kids to pursue... NBA star, Desperate Housewife, etc. But we don't make plumbing or auto mechanics "cool", and if we do, we funnel the high school kids into the trades who can barely fog a window. This doesn't do the trades any favors-- there's a lot more tech and a lot of solo operators who need to be strong self-starters.

End rant, for now, I guess.

 

[OneEyeJack]

Originally Posted By: KzMitch
Originally Posted By: Silverado12
Originally Posted By: OneEyeJack
Worry not. The government will solve this problem just like they did with healthcare. What could possibly go wrong? The government is here to take care of you. Now that jobs in aerospace, manufacturing, gas/oil are gone these minimum wage jobs will be the future.


The government was influenced by the multinationals when they changed trade policy. It benefits a few importers and VIPs at the expense of everyone else. The gov't should protect the majority of the citizens, not just the privileged few. It should be looking at ways to create more jobs here. Just having a surplus of labor will drive wages down (the evidence is all these jobs not paying anything).




“Any man who thinks he can be happy and prosperous by letting the government
take care of him better take a closer look at the American Indian.”


― Henry Ford


Exactly. And on top of that if the government takes care of everyone then the goal of making people equal except for important people will have been achieved.


PS - If the meaning of the word "is" &#8213 does that mean that these $5K bonds will be just one more program for the government to raid and leave behind a worthless IOU?

 

[sleddriver]

Originally Posted By: javacontour
I tell my kids if your job can be done with a keyboard, it can be sent anywhere in the world.

Bingo. JC has hit it on the head. Why pay someone (anyone) to sit in a cubicle in the USA, when they do the same for much less, off-shore? Answer is: They won't.

The up & coming hip/hop/flip/flop generation who is quite enamored with technology, has yet to get fully impacted by this....emphasis on yet. Unfortunately for them, it's going to hit them head on and they won't really connect-the-dots. The point being that tech-jobs that can be done remotely....can be (and will be) done remotely.

I was trying to impress this upon my nephew recently, asking if his HS still has wood or metal shop. Surprisingly they did. However, he said it was "off-track" or of lower-credit or lower points...something like that. I countered that life isn't all about GPA or points. That it was important for him to learn a skill...a valuable hands-on skill that he could develop and fall back on when need be. Unfortunately, his father isn't a tool user like I am. It's a different paradigm. He's at the mercy of paying someone else to fix whatever's broken. I'm not. I can fix anything.

There seems to be a lot of this mentality going around. This is what happens when hi-tech is valued more than hi-touch. The former is easily off-shored, hired-out. Tha later...not so much. When you need someone hands on, in-the-present to fix something or deal with someone or some issue, face-to-face. That's not easily replaced, nor off-shored. I'm also talking about the big-picture here. There are numerous land-mines and time-bombs just waiting to go off. A good deal of LIFE is learning to wisely navigate these.

No doubt some of the later 20-somethings are waking up to this fact. Their competition is not just the new grads, it's on the other continents as well. It would appear too many have been hearded into the same squeeze chute (college for all being one). What happens when you get a surplus? In addition, many are loaded with debt. How do you qualify for a house like that?

The elder baby-boomers have already begun to retire en-masse. And will continue to do so for the next 20 or so years. Have you listened to any AM radio lately? Heard all the commercials about dealing with the IRS?, retirement planning, credit card debt, trouble selling a house in a depressed area? They're saturation-bombing the airwaves. Those are the topics.

Tip O' the hat to you JC...you are obviously reading the changing currents well and passing along your knowledge to your kids. Hopefully, they have the wisdom to listen.

 

[eljefino]

Originally Posted By: sleddriver
That it was important for him to learn a skill...a valuable hands-on skill that he could develop and fall back on when need be. Unfortunately, his father isn't a tool user like I am. It's a different paradigm. He's at the mercy of paying someone else to fix whatever's broken. I'm not. I can fix anything.


Then we have things like the Audi Robot... why retain a master tech on hand when you can call in the Audi Robot to stare at your car and instruct the parts replacer on site how to handle this thing.

Ergo, why bother making yourself a master tech?

 

[dhise]

yeah, my skilled trades toolmaker job went overseas. Any monkey can run a mill or a lathe around here.



Originally Posted By: sleddriver

I tell my kids if your job can be done with a keyboard, it can be sent anywhere in the world.

Bingo. JC has hit it on the head. Why pay someone (anyone) to sit in a cubicle in the USA, when they do the same for much less, off-shore? Answer is: They won't.

The up & coming hip/hop/flip/flop generation who is quite enamored with technology, has yet to get fully impacted by this....emphasis on yet. Unfortunately for them, it's going to hit them head on and they won't really connect-the-dots. The point being that tech-jobs that can be done remotely....can be (and will be) done remotely.

I was trying to impress this upon my nephew recently, asking if his HS still has wood or metal shop. Surprisingly they did. However, he said it was "off-track" or of lower-credit or lower points...something like that. I countered that life isn't all about GPA or points. That it was important for him to learn a skill...a valuable hands-on skill that he could develop and fall back on when need be. Unfortunately, his father isn't a tool user like I am. It's a different paradigm. He's at the mercy of paying someone else to fix whatever's broken. I'm not. I can fix anything.

There seems to be a lot of this mentality going around. This is what happens when hi-tech is valued more than hi-touch. The former is easily off-shored, hired-out. Tha later...not so much. When you need someone hands on, in-the-present to fix something or deal with someone or some issue, face-to-face. That's not easily replaced, nor off-shored. I'm also talking about the big-picture here. There are numerous land-mines and time-bombs just waiting to go off. A good deal of LIFE is learning to wisely navigate these.

No doubt some of the later 20-somethings are waking up to this fact. Their competition is not just the new grads, it's on the other continents as well. It would appear too many have been hearded into the same squeeze chute (college for all being one). What happens when you get a surplus? In addition, many are loaded with debt. How do you qualify for a house like that?

 

[Mr Nice]

Lots of skilled folks out of work and are desperate for a job. I'm sure there are some unemployed tradesmen applying at this Walmart.


23,000 people apply at a newly built Walmart near Washington DC.

http://www.businessinsider.com/wal-mart-receives-23000-applications-2013-11

 

[supton]

Originally Posted By: sleddriver
I was trying to impress this upon my nephew recently, asking if his HS still has wood or metal shop. Surprisingly they did. However, he said it was "off-track" or of lower-credit or lower points...something like that.


I recall those days. I was able to get a few shop classes in for gen ed credit (or something like that); but a few buddies did all day (or most day) stuff building houses for senior year. I was always jealous. Where would I be today had I learned a bit more about framing, finish carpentry, household wiring, roof ventilation, etc? Couldn't do that sort of thing, not when pre-calc beckoned!

 

[Silverado12]

Originally Posted By: supton
Originally Posted By: sleddriver
I was trying to impress this upon my nephew recently, asking if his HS still has wood or metal shop. Surprisingly they did. However, he said it was "off-track" or of lower-credit or lower points...something like that.


I recall those days. I was able to get a few shop classes in for gen ed credit (or something like that); but a few buddies did all day (or most day) stuff building houses for senior year. I was always jealous. Where would I be today had I learned a bit more about framing, finish carpentry, household wiring, roof ventilation, etc? Couldn't do that sort of thing, not when pre-calc beckoned!


LOL my parents forced me to take pre calculus. Haven't used it to this day in the real world.

 

[SwampSurvivor]

Originally Posted By: LT4 Vette
Lots of skilled folks out of work and are desperate for a job. I'm sure there are some unemployed tradesmen applying at this Walmart.


23,000 people apply at a newly built Walmart near Washington DC.

http://www.businessinsider.com/wal-mart-receives-23000-applications-2013-11





After the SOTU , I shared an article about our President and his mandate for free community college.

I have a friend in DC who claims that area is booming. Anything you want, boom, instant $100K. I'm not familiar with that area so I can't argue with him.

However, 23000 people applying for a single Walmart ... That would say that he was not so correct in his assumption.

I have relatives in an area where manufacturing isn't dead. You can make $20 to $30 an hour (non union, so no union dues eating into your income) easily.