Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
According to CNN-Money ' the US has lost more than 5,000 manufacturing jobs since 2000. CNN states that jobs in manufacturing pay an average of $20/hr and that job losses in the manufacturing sector are due to advances in technology rather than the flight of American manufacturing jobs to third world sweatshops. This feels counter-intuitive to me since I'm old enough to remember the job market in the US both pre and post NAFTA. Pre-NAFTA my hometown of Colorado Springs had earned the nickname "Silicon Mountain" due to the number of micro-electronics outfits (including HP, among others) that established manufacturing and research facilities there. I had a friend who was working on the production line for HP when NAFTA went thru. In less than a year, the company announced that it was relocating overseas and my friend got laid off along with most of the other electronics employees in the area. The local economy took a major plunge, and while Colorado Springs is hardly another Detroit, real estate values plummeted, and for a while, Colorado Springs earned the dubious honor of becoming the "foreclosure capitol of the nation." Meanwhile, my friend ended up working a low paid job in a call center before eventually leaving the city altogether. Since then the economy of Colorado Springs has recovered, but jobs there tend to be low paid, especially when compared with wages in comparable cities across the nation. Needless to say, my old town was only one of many places across the US which lost good paying jobs when corporations started their flight out of the country.
The explanation which resonates most strongly with what's happening in the US today comes from the Center for economic and Policy Research. They have published an excellent study which merits a quotation at some length:
Quote:
We believe, instead, that the decline in the economy’s ability to create good jobs is related to a deterioration in the bargaining power of workers, especially those at the middle and the bottom of the income scale. The main cause of the loss of bargaining power is the large-scale restructuring of the labor market that began at the end of the 1970s and continues to the present...
Couldn't agree more!
Last edited by toosie; 01-09-2017 at 04:47 PM..
Reason: TOS - copyright - link and brief snippet only
There's a mismatch of expectations on both the employer and applicant sides.
Employer side: they want their candidate to be practically perfect in every way, like Mary Poppins. The candidate should possess the ability to work the job today. He or she should already have the all skills packaged and wrapped up in a bow with NO expense or resources necessary from the employer. The candidates college and previous jobs should have given him the ribbon-wrapped package.
On top of that, they believe that applicants that possess those qualities & skills should be grateful a job announcement has been created at a wonderful employer, and thus accept sub-standards wages that offer no hope of home ownership or family formation based on CoL in the area. I've told them - offer 20k more in salary or reduce the quals in the announcement. One will get you a person with the skills you want. The other will get you someone not as qualified but willing to take the pay. Oh no, can't do that, we have to have both!
Applicant side: what Mathjak said has a lot of truth:
Quote:
we have had so many applicant's on the low end tell us they want 20.00 an hour for picker packer jobs .
Yeah, the applicants to my workplace have a lot of this sense of entitlement based on nothing. I've seen this regardless of age. Older applicants tend to think their experience autmoatically qualifies them and they don't even have to try. Younger applicants think they've graduated from Oxford rather than Idaho State and expect to be immediately placed in a mid-level leadership role.
Perhaps there was once a day when both sides could meet in the middle, but I've never seen it. I see applicants complain about lack of decent jobs and employers complain about lack of qualified candidates.
Maybe you should ask why and how the US is gaining jobs. Unemployment is extremely low. Way more jobs are being created than needed for population growth. Many of those who were discouraged and left the workforce are returning. Those who were underemployed are finding better jobs. Salaries are expected to grow at a rate that is higher than the rate of inflation in costs.
Yes, we're gaining jobs, but mainly in the service sector. The majority of those jobs pay minimum wage to $12/hr and very few people can live on that. When it comes to high paying tech jobs, there really aren't a lot of openings right now and when there are, people are piled up at the door trying to get those jobs.
Yup, nationwide unemployment is under 5%. That includes those who just want to collect benefits, those who live in rural areas with no hope for a job, those with no skills, those who are addicted to drugs or alcohol, and those who are mentally ill or those who are just plain lazy and have found a way to get by. The situation is very bad for many employers who are having trouble finding decent employees out of the dregs of society that are among the unemployed.
we are one of long island's largest employers and getting quality people from the unemployed pool is horrible and it has been that way for years now .
we all tend to use head hunters and target the quality employee's already working for competitors .
2008-2009 gave employers a chance to clean out all the marginal employee's . anybody still unemployed from back then in our area likely has reasons behind it .
in fact anyone in our industry unemployed , likely has reasons behind it . most worthy of being hired are snatched up by competitors before their body's even hit the streets .
we have ad's on most employment sites looking for people in every capacity ,from engineer to accounting to drivers and warehouse . the number of people from these sites that make the grade is very tiny . most of our employee's have been employee's at competitor's that made the move over , not the unemployed . . .
we hired over 100 people just in the last few years .
we have so many job positions open right now in long island , new jersey and CT. and are struggling to fill them with quality people . like i said , we do background checks and drug testing . so many can't even get to first base . many are not presentable , they come in like street thugs , they speak horribly , then we have the ones on unemployment who want you to match their unemployment and working off the books salary wise .
the unemployment numbers are skewed in both directions . so many are just not employable even when there are jobs .
Last edited by mathjak107; 01-10-2017 at 02:41 AM..
Yes, we're gaining jobs, but mainly in the service sector. The majority of those jobs pay minimum wage to $12/hr and very few people can live on that. When it comes to high paying tech jobs, there really aren't a lot of openings right now and when there are, people are piled up at the door trying to get those jobs.
That may be true where you live. Unfortunately there are areas of the country where the economy is not doing well and not likely to do so again. Perhaps you live in one of those areas.
Nationally, your experience does not match what is happening. The best jobs are the jobs that have the lowest unemployment rates. Unemployment rates for most "high paying tech jobs" are extremely low and have been for several years. Companies are having difficulty finding suitable employees. You can easily check this on the BLS webpage and look up the data for any specific job type. Sometimes the only way to get a good job with a good future is to move. Even the peasants in China have been giving up scratching a subsistence living from the land and moving to the cities.
Yes, we're gaining jobs, but mainly in the service sector. The majority of those jobs pay minimum wage to $12/hr and very few people can live on that.
And data on jobs by sector and weekly wages reflects this... oh wait it doesn't.
This particular claim is one of the most commonly thrown out that is never actually supported by any data. People have heard it, so they repeat it, but when it comes down to a source it is usually some vague reference to noticing that lots of stores are closed or some relative/friend with advanced degree that can't get a job better than retail.
Anybody with 21st century job skills and a decent work ethic has a job and would have no problem finding another.
The problem is that the combination of global competition and automation have made it so the unskilled high school C student has the option of either doing a low paid service sector job or doing a job nobody else wants to do for higher compensation. If you want to pump septic tanks for a living, somebody will pay you pretty good money to do that. If you want to train up some as an HVAC tech and are willing to climb up on a roof when it's 120F or -10F up there to fix something (the Mathjak kind of career path), somebody will pay you pretty good money to do that.
Why are US citizens losing jobs? Is it due to immigration? Technology? Jobs going overseas? High wages? Some combination of these reasons or other reasons?
I'm known for my polling and this one will allow for multiple choice. I also like to see possible solutions in my threads and not just venting.
Due to inadequate or expensive college education. It looks like those who can afford college, go there and most of the rest are filled by outsourcing. But at least it produces quality graduates instead of diluting them.
I am also wondering if the retail jobs( cashier, customer service) jobs contribute heavily to job statistics published by bureaus.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
