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There is something new. What is new affects all first world countries not just the US. Free trade and removal of protective tariff barriers makes it cheaper to move production to Asian countries and ship the finished product back. It used to be you could land a manufacturing job after high school just by knocking on a few doors. Those jobs are gone, the factories converted to warehouse space, and then later razed for a Home Depot, Walmart, or townhouse development.
That reality has been gone for a couple three decades now. Smh.
I was watching Fox News last night and they had a panel that was going on a rant about how Americans are too lazy to acquire the skills to fill the enoooooourmous number of high-paying job openings in the United States, for which companies have to fill with H1B Visa workers because they "can't find any qualified Americans."
Now, let me explain something to those of you who grew up in previous generations and don't understand what the job market is like for young adults nowadays. It's hyper-competitve as there are so many Americans going to college, so many immigrants coming here to college (my college was about 40% Asians on student visas trying to get into the good programs and obtain work visas here), and, quite frankly, automation is making jobs irrelevant by the boatload.
I did everything that society told me to -- got a STEM degree from a good school, acquired relevant skills, got an entry-level job in the tech sector -- and I can attest that it is still super-competitive to stay relevant in today's job market. Getting an entry-level job in the first place required me to fill out hundreds of applications and get lucky, since "entry-level" means having 5+ years of professional experience. I have to put in a lot of time outside of work to bolster my skills enough to stay relevant. If I even tried to travel the world for a month, I would probably fall through the cracks in society, be considered irrelevant for employment since I would have a "gap" on my resume (OMG! HE DIDN'T WORK FOR 1 MONTH! HE'S LAZY AND PROBABLY LOST ALL HIS SKILLS!!!! ).
I don't mean to focus on the tech sector exclusively. From what I understand, every single sector is over-saturated with job seekers and is raising experience requirements faster than people can possibly acquire the skills.
Of the tens of millions of unemployed and severely underemployed Americans, I guarantee that a lot of them would love to fill the roles that employers are supposedly so desperate to fill, and would be willing to do what it takes to learn the skills necessarily, but the opportunity just isn't there!
First of all quit watching fox news. The problem is that many experienced people have been laid off. So they are looking for jobs and chances are they will get them before you because they have experience. Plus people can't afford to retire at an early age like they did before.
No they didn't. I never went to college yet had a job and moved out when I was 18. And yeah, I would cry today because you just can't do that now.
I agree. I just retired after 21 years working for a large national corporation. I wouldn't even be able to get an interview for the job that I had these days because I don't have a college degree. The funny thing is that so many of the people I worked with who had a degree were not exactly the sharpest arrows in the quiver. But they had that degree which got them in the door.
It's a different world out there in the workplace these days.
The lazy, stupid, unqualified American worker meme.
It's nothing new. The right wing has been using this lie for decades, especially in their never ending attempts to destroy unions and justify offshoring. These guys love to hate Americans. A casual stroll through the threads and posts in this forum confirms it all too well.
And Fox News is their gospel.
Boo-hoo, poor ****in` unions are getting a bad rap.
I`m not sure where you were living during the `60s and `70s when union jobs were the norm and everybody had a union job horror story like, "My job is to put in five screws when the part comes by, but I only put in three because three will hold it and I know no one is checking."
Unions have engineered their own demise by aligning themselves with a political party that hates white males and everything that is uniquely American.
Having said that, nothing in this discussion is absolute all the time and there are lots of smart solutions to falling wages and reduced worker demand.
The Corporate ***** wing of the Republican Party working hand in hand with the Clinton Administration gave us NAFTA and the 2000 China Trade Act.
Aside from promises made in the 2008 Democratic primary race, we aren`t even talking about renegotiating these give away trade deals, so how does union membership help when anyone can make anything in third world countries and sell it here?
It has to be one or the other.
We cannot have both free trade and union jobs.
We cannot have guest workers, open borders, amnesty and living wages for ordinary Americans.
Liberalized trade is good for a nation. That is about the only thing 95+% of economists agree upon. The condition we were in after WWII, where we were one of the very few developed nations whose infrastructure was not in shambles, was unique and unless we decide to nuke Japan and Western Europe will not be duplicated. People need to stop whining and deal with reality.
I applied for a produce associate at a supermarket a while ago, and you wouldn't believe that the auto response email said that the position had a high volume of applicants. Also, a dishwasher application at Boston Market requires an IQ test. I kid you not!!!
Employers can only play tricks like this when they have a pool of candidates to choose from.
A lot of these jobs also require you to fill out a lengthy questionnaire that basically tests you on how subservient of an employee you'll be. Asking questions like "is it ever okay to lie?" and so on. It's a joke.
I could teach everyone a skill in the trades that at one time paid $120,000 a year net.
With the illegal labor lowering bar and turning good skilled jobs into a commodity today, that same skill may bring in $40,000 a year net.
What I did in the 80's and 90's, that brought me $2000-$3000 a week, now pays the illegals $500 a week.
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