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I just searched for and read this article. All I can say is wow. The stories in the comments section were even worse. Thanks for the mention of this article.
I am currently looking! I have applied for a few jobs where I am super qualified and the qualified applicant pool is pretty small. Surprised I didn't get a call. They must be looking for one of the unicorns.
One of my colleagues told me she saw a job posting looking for 10 years of experience in something that has only been around for 5 years. Hahahhaha!!!!!
The reality is, there aren't enough jobs relatively to the size of the labor pool.
It is slowly getting better. We peaked with over 5 available unemployed per single opening. The last stat I saw had it under 4. Nashville metro is 2-1, and that is an unhealthy undersupply of labor ratio. The reality is a good chunk of the available nationally are a mismatch for available jobs, so typically a ratio in the high twos to 3.0 is a good equilibrium. We are closer to that than to our >5 peak huge oversupply of labor.
Apprenticeships are coming back in force. Both large and small manufacturers around the nation are responding to a well acknowledged skills shortage by bringing on young, green candidates with strong math skills, as well as a willingness to work.
Most people find math a struggle. I can remember when I was in elementary school. I would always complete those times tables before the rest of the class did. I was really good at arithmetic. Then algebra came. No big deal. I was able to learn how to dissect those quadratic equations without any problems. Geometry and Trig weren't undo able at all either.
Then came Calculus.... I fell flat on my face here. I would try to do all the homework, and get help from tutoring, and still not understand what the hell I was doing. My professor saw that I at least tried to do all the work and curved my grade to a C, Yes, a curved C. Thankfully my degree did not require Calculus 2, because I would not have been able to build on that at all.
If some of these trades require math skills on the level of Calculus, then I can see why there is a shortage.
Apprenticeships are coming back in force. Both large and small manufacturers around the nation are responding to a well acknowledged skills shortage by bringing on young, green candidates with strong math skills, as well as a willingness to work.
I kid you not when I say there is a very real, and very frightening shortage of these vital workers who make the world go round. The U.S. accounts for about 1/5th of the world's industrial output, and yet the average worker is on the verge of retirement.
One roadblock is the lack of candidates willing to take on these challenging and demanding jobs. They are not easy, and the pay for some is less than years past adjusted for inflation. Engineers have been complaining about the same thing though, and yet, people are more willing to spend 4 years of their lives and thousands of dollars to become one. We may not need 20% of the workforce toiling over metal parts, but we don't even have 2% of the population considering these jobs. All I can say... America better get it's priorities straight
These are still solid middle class jobs that can pay $30/hr or more at the right company. Apprentices receive all of their education free of charge. Many companies even provide measuring tools on the job. One company I received a call back from recently in South Carolina that is starting candidates out at $26/hr. If you can't do well on that than the wage isn't the problem... It's you
Outside of this...
The small business hiring gauge is reading in the pre recession levels.
"Employment at companies with fewer than 50 workers, such as SustainU, is stronger now than before the last recession, while larger businesses are still lagging behind, according to data from Automatic Data Processing Inc., a manager of employer payrolls."
Seems small businesses really are doing the bulk of job creation. Problem for many in my industry is a frightening lack of qualified candidates. As the business owner where I work said today.... "The skill level of candidates is appalling. In most cases, they aren't even there". Simply put... You can't create a job if you can't find somebody to do it.
Sadly, in the corporate world's desire to eliminate high labor costs they have eliminated and / or made themselves vulnerable to massive institutional knowledge loss. I think too many of the short term management reward mindset miss this altogether.
I know friends / family in some utility / infrastructure type roles and it's scary when you hear how little knowledge some of the new workers have and how removed the worker knowledge base is from the current day to day operations.
It's good to see the small and mid size companies have the wisdom to manage better. There should be more on the job training programs. There's a automotive software company in the region here that trains hires for the specific programming they desire. These are type of company mindset that should prosper.
Absolutely spot on observation. It would be great to have the opportunity to reinvent oneself as Rambler123 has said but when people are living and supporting themselves and likely their familes as well it is not even conceivable to think about which of the living expenses will go unpaid (for quite some time I might add) in order to go back to school (whether that is brick and mortar or online) in order to reinvent oneself.
I see this every day and also, as has been said, there's no easy fix and it's not like people are looking for the easy way out but again to take money out of an already and pitifully thin and tight budget for schooling and training is just impossible to do.
This is one reason so many of us shake our head, this entire thread is not about going back to school, in fact it is about forgetting about college and going and finding a blue collar job to work as an apprentice type to learn an industry. I have seen it done by many many people.
Fact is if someone is truly supporting a family, and cannot find a job in their field, how do they not reinvent themselves at least somewhat? Unemployment runs out sooner or later, and one day the parents are going to decide it is time for their kids to grow up and do something other then sit around complaining that there are no jobs in their field.
I know all about having to reinvent myself, and it has nothing to do with me being 37 now, and getting a break because of it. maybe some of you are too young to really know what happened in 2008. It destroyed a whole industry, between home builders, real estate agents, appraisers, and mortgage people. I was a mortgage broker, and real estate investor. You want to talk about how companies do not want to hire you due to your lack of experience, try being guilty by association (a handful of criminals) and having every newspaper, TV news report, politician, and trade group blame your occupation for the downfall of the entire economy, despite the fact that as many realtors, bankers, appraisers, and real estate investors went to jail for their crimes as Mortgage brokers did. Now add to that your own trade associations viewing it as a chance to force out the smaller businesses, and competition and climbing into bed with the politicians on a witch hunt, all while covering their own asses and lining their pockets.
For an example of what really happened to many of us go watch the old Eddie Murphy Dan Akroyd movie Trading Places. That is very similar to what happened to me, friends I had known for years suddenly acted like they had never met me, executives of companies that had offered the world to me a few weeks before the market tanked blocked my emails and would not accept my calls, members of my own family had the nerve to question my integrity. to put it mildly my life could have been over, in fact I know several people who committed suicide, a couple that ended up in the mental hospitals, and more then a few that climbed into bottles and/or drugs to never been seen or heard from again.
To add to it, I was self employed, many of the people who were mortgage brokers were also contract employees, despite making into the 6 figures I did not get unemployment, and at 31 years old with 2 children my mother was not in the position to take us in and let us sleep in the basement, my father lived out of the area, and due to my daughters medical conditions we could not legitimately leave the area to stay near him. My wife and kids had to eat and have somewhere to sleep so I had to find something.
It is amazing the jobs you will take when you have no other options, and refuse to let your kids sleep on the street. After the collapse I immediatly got a job working as a temp doing data entry for a accounting firm, making $8.50 an hour by the end of tax season I was considered a full tax preparer. That job allowed me to work 2 days a week during the offseason, so come April 16th I had to get another job, which was working at a landscaping supply store as a laborer loading trees, manure, sod, and plants onto customers pickups right there next to the illegal immigrants. I worked 3 days a week and 12 hours a day for a whole $9 an hour. That fall I started taking classes online as I was able to get grants to pay for online courses, however my landscaping job ended, so I then went to work for a phone room, making $9.25 an hour plus bonus (which was always set after the month had already been completed).
From there I went back to work full time at the accounting firm, in january, the pay was finally starting to get a little better at $12 an hour, I stayed there for a total of 4 tax seasons and ended up making $22 an hour. However after the 1st tax season I was laid off, and had sold off every thing of value we had accumulated during my time in the mortgage business, so I had to find another job, I went to work in the oil field getting the job specifically because I could prove my work ethic and ability to do blue collar work through references from the landscaping company. I worked 70-80 hour weeks with the schedule being 2 weeks on and 2 weeks off, On my weeks off, when we actually got them, I would do everything I could to stay ahead on my school work and turn it in when it was due. It was a good system and I was making pretty good money, however my wife could not take caring for my daughter by herself anymore and I was forced to come home when the CPA firm called me in January.
the following April I was laid off again, so I found another job working for a company doing phone sales, that job paid $9.50 a hour, but with the money I had saved from tax season and working in the oil field I was able to stay there 9 months while going to school on campus. Once again come january I went back to the accounting firm full time until April 15th, this time I was allowed to stay on very part time working on the books for a couple of companies. To add to my income I got a job driving a taxi on the weekends, and started my own accounting and tax prep company with the accounting firms blessing as they were not looking to grow and my options were limited. That year I worked 30 hours a week driving a cab, 10 hours for the accounting firm, went to school part time, and had my own accounting firm that took up a few hours a week.
3 years later I still have my own firm, and to date it has been successful allowing me to hire employees and putting me back to a decent income with decent hours at least 8 months out of the year.
I tell this not to brag, but to show that someone making $120,000 a year, can lose everything, start over, and if they have to take any job they can find, they can work hard and figure out how to make it work. I grew up with a step grandfather who loved to tell stories about his life during the great depression, he worked some good and some terrible jobs, and honestly i figured if he could put up with that and do what he did then what I had to do was not so bad. Sure from 2007-2010 sucked, and I was miserable, but I looked at it as having no other choice I did what I had to do. I took a terrible situation and did the best I could with it. Every poster on this board can find a way to make it work if they have no other options, but it will mean some severe sacrifice (my wife and I did not pay for us to go out to dinner for 4 years, we moved from a 2800 sq ft house to a 1200 sq ft townhouse, both of our cars were over 10 years old for much of the time, and we are just now getting around to replacing furniture that was bought 10+ years ago), and leaving your ego at home (I got laughed at even by family members when I told them what I was doing for work often times, and the illegal immigrants thought it was a joke when they were told I was working with them but they grew to respect my by the end of that summer), and at least for me it took having a clear plan on how I was going to get out of the mess and get back to providing a good life for my wife and kids. I do not suggest my route for others, in fact if you have better options then go for it, but there are plenty of ways to reinvent yourself, and honestly working at finding burrs on pieces of metal sounds much easier than what I went through.
sorry for the long post, but this is something that I keep seeing, and felt the need to finally respond as it drives me nuts when people say they are stuck in their career or the field of their degree.
I've seen some of these same issues here in my area where machine shops are crying for qualified help but can't find it. I'd love to learn to program a CNC machine. However, I'd never have the chance to do so unless I became a qualified machinist. Since I'm not very mechanically inclined, the odds of me becoming a machinist are pretty much nil.
Lol. Job shortage my left foot. Job shortage means one of a few things:
1. There aren't enough people who want to do the job *for what we are paying*
2. There aren't enough qualified people who are applying for the job *for what we are paying*
3. We are too cheap to spring for a job listing or employer account on monster/dice/craigslist/careerbuilder and don't want to spend resources marketing the position.
Give me a break... household wages have been stagnant for the past decade and these companies have the gall to claim that there aren't enough workers around? Pay your people well and your problems finding and retaining employees will be minor.
My problem is I am in the wrong area for... well, anything. I am also not in a position yet to move myself and my family out of here at this current point in time (working on that). I have applied to the Pipefitters Local here for their Apprenticeship after my Welding School and they still have had no meetings about Apprent. membership plus their school already started for this year. With the Pipefitters, I applied through the UA's Veterans in Piping program which should shoot me up the list along with my welding certs. should cut a little time off the 5 year apprenticeship. Just Temping in an unsatisfying job but saving that money up.
Hoping next year, when my daughter gets out of Kindergarten, we will be ready to leave.
Last edited by BP72; 09-10-2013 at 11:12 AM..
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