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You do realize that the majority of jobs in the US are still considered blue collar? Of course you do. Which professions are being "decimated"? Law? There's been a surplus of lawyers for a couple decades.
Medicine? There's actually a shortage in many areas. Teaching? It's always like it is now, in demand subjects get hired while everyone else has to scramble.
The biggest mistake we've made is convince marginal students they can go to college.
The latter point is certainly true. However, economic trends are not neatly cutting out the fat, but laying waste to whole professions (such as IT) filled with often far from marginal individuals. Needless unemployment is also caused by the excessive piling of work hours onto a narrowing proportion of employed individuals. Meanwhile, a crop of ever more useless people rises to the top. Desirable career fields should not be conceded by those excluded but capable because the oligarchs want to use 80 hr/week South Asian wage slaves. On the other hand though, yes, the American (mostly liberal) obsession with pouring resources into the least promising students and lavishing them with useless "degrees" provides the anvil to the hammer that's destroying the productive bedrock of the country.
i see skill gaps daily but not with the entry level but the fifty years old. and it basic computer skills like word, excel, time sheets. even just turning it on. they will fight you tooth and nail to keep from using a computer
Well, I'm in my 60s and I've owned a personal computer since 1981. I started building my own in 85, and I've built all my own desktops and even lower-end servers since then. I've been doing motherboard swaps in Thinkpads for the last ten years.
But that certainly does not guarantee me a job. I've been working IT support for a Fortune 50 company headquarters, for the last fifteen years since leaving the military, have network certs...but I'd be just as much out of luck looking for a new job today as any Millennial because I'm not going to work for peanuts and there is age discrimination against people with gray hair when they really want a cheap (or free) intern.
The latter point is certainly true. However, economic trends are not neatly cutting out the fat, but laying waste to whole professions (such as IT) filled with often far from marginal individuals. Needless unemployment is also caused by the excessive piling of work hours onto a narrowing proportion of employed individuals. Meanwhile, a crop of ever more useless people rises to the top. Desirable career fields should not be conceded by those excluded but capable because the oligarchs want to use 80 hr/week South Asian wage slaves. On the other hand though, yes, the American (mostly liberal) obsession with pouring resources into the least promising students and lavishing them with useless "degrees" provides the anvil to the hammer that's destroying the productive bedrock of the country.
When I worked in industry 40 years ago the same was true, so what's changed?
What is it that many posters say to us teachers? Oh, I remember, "You knew that the job wasn't a 40 hour week. Real professionals stay until the work is done". I've distilled that.
Employability has nothing to do with "skills." Do you think Harvard history majors have trouble finding employment? Do they have "skills?" Talk of a "skills gap" is just more corporate/bootstrapper sycophant garbage.
Take 'Harvard' from that equation and replace it with (Any State College) and the answer is yes. A lot of them are struggling desperately to find employment.
Knowing how to hit a moving a target with a well flicked booger is a 'skill, it's just not relevant to the marketplace. A lot of the 'ology degrees from Academia that were bulked up during the golden era of government money and increased admissions = increased income leave kids with tons of debt and questionable futures but a bunch of supportive 'academics' who insist it was worth it all along.
If anyone is pushing 'garbage' in this debate, it's academia who insists that five-six figures in student debt is a perfectly fair trade for the wonderful 'expanded mind' you'll get when you leave with an unmarketable degree. It's bull****.
I know a number of people who work at Abbott Labs and have been there for years.
I'd wish them luck. It seems they announce a layoff every 6 months or so and right after they do my email and phone rings off the hook with permatemp jobs for "our client in Lake, Co IL" I considered working for them as well until I saw they were a churn and burn permatemp place and I am so done with that. I wouldn't touch pharma with a ten foot pole not that most other large companies are much better for science professionals. Frankly I wouldn't let anyone in my family consider a career in science so Fussell can keep whining and calling Americans stupid when in fact they are way to smart to want anything to do with his company.
I'd wish them luck. It seems they announce a layoff every 6 months or so and right after they do my email and phone rings off the hook with permatemp jobs for "our client in Lake, Co IL" I considered working for them as well until I saw they were a churn and burn permatemp place and I am so done with that.
Some have been there more than ten years, but none of them have been laid off yet, so we'll see.
Right, but with almost half the layoffs being in Europe, one closed plant being in Puerto Rico, and one wave of layoffs primarily affecting workers in its global nutrition, vascular, established-pharmaceuticals and molecular-diagnostics divisions, it's spread out enough where I can understand how some departments at headquarters are safer than if they were in labs or plants.
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