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It is not realistic because many jobs are not that skilled. And many employers demand specific experience, and there is no way to provide them with acceptable experience.
I was told just trying to find entry level applicants that can show basic reading and math skills and can pass a drug test is sometimes very difficult..
All they need to do is scrap the drug tests, and they can hire the best of the best. How many doctors and lawyers and securities brokers do you think would pass a drug test? Drugs are de facto if not de jure decriminalized in almost every state, and testing employee for drugs is like testing them for residual systemic alcohol or junk food or tobacco or staying up late at night.
All they need to do is scrap the drug tests, and they can hire the best of the best. How many doctors and lawyers and securities brokers do you think would pass a drug test? Drugs are de facto if not de jure decriminalized in almost every state, and testing employee for drugs is like testing them for residual systemic alcohol or junk food or tobacco or staying up late at night.
I think some companies have done away with them for roles where they really don't matter. For example IT jobs. They weren't cost effective.
It seems to me that employers refuse to provide any training or experience for new hires. The employers all seem to want temporary employees for little money and no benefits. IMHO the employers can keep wanting.
The US has traditionally employed a large number of workers with few skills and provided the necessary training for them to do their job. Many of these workers moved their way up the ladder as they gained experience and learned new skills. These jobs traditionally paid a wage that was sufficient to modestly support a family, taking care of basic needs.
Today technology and automation has largely replaced many of these no skill/low skill jobs. Increasingly, employers are looking for employees with specific skills/experiences even for entry-level positions. Most of these skills/experiences require a college degree or an expensive post-secondary program. However, there exists a large group of people who lack the ability, will, motivation or interest in acquiring these skills. Even if they did, is it realistic to assume that the US can educate/train all its citizens to meet the employment realities of an automated world? If this goal were to be realized, would there be enough job opportunities for the production and services needed to satisfy demand or would it further cannibalize the middle-class standard of living with a more abundant supply of potential employees?
I see no reason thus far for thinking it's anything other than an entitlement mentality among employers running rampant these days.
Somebody's got to train. Somebody's got to invest.
Without anyone willing to invest, capitalism doesn't work. Our society must stand up to these spoiled employers and say "NO!" and also "If you want skilled workers, train!"
Even in the early 2000s, I clearly remember job opening descriptions focusing more on degrees and less on experience, as employers were willing to train. Now it's all messed up and needs to be fixed.
After reading some on the Mike Rowe Works website I've come to the conclusion that our current K-12 education system is failing to provide value for those not planning on continuing a formal education. There is a lot of work out there but less and less of America's youth wants to engage in any of the trades work that is increasingly being done by foreign laborers who are coming here to work in order that THEIR children won't have to do manual labor in the future.
This growing aversion to skilled hands on work is a real problem for a society that has equated manual labor with a kind of personal failing, just the term,"high skill" connotes a type of labor requiring vastly superior abilities. All labor not done by machines is skilled, the level of difficulty can be a determiner of compensation requirements but overall, skill denotes the acquisition of knowledge and an ability to reason, two things that employers say are in short supply.
For those who rail against the workers in lesser skilled employment as people lacking in motivation to "do better" in life there is little hope of them becoming part of a solution, instead, they feed the fires of employment discontent. Is it any wonder that so much of our youth think they are bound to be the next Steve Jobs, or the next "startup magnate," and failing that means a life of certain drudgery? We've become a society that is characterized by the notion of "High Tech or Bust", this has become our mantra for the youth to latch on to.
It's easy to blame the worker for his plight, not educated enough, not motivated enough, and always the lament about possessing lesser skills being a failing in and of itself. America has changed, and those things that used to make sense to us no longer seem sensible to the employer class. Training your own workers instead of pawning off the task to for-profit Lo-Tech schools, insisting upon a tax supported public education system to actually teach some hard skills, less globalism and more Americanism, more helpful and less self centered when faced with national scale problems, and lastly, less tolerant of a lopsided system of compensation.
There seems to be such hatred for anything that smacks of a collective, American's hate taxes, they hate their own government, they all too often hate each other, but they also hate to see the crumbling infrastructure of our roads, bridges, dams, sewers, water supply systems, and schools, they want government to "do something" but not be interfering in the process, they want the other guy to go to work, pay taxes, and "get off of welfare", but, they also support a system of education that renders up too many unemployable lost souls. And the worst paradox of all, the widespread notion that work has little monetary value unless it demands the utmost ability of a person.........
After reading some on the Mike Rowe Works website I've come to the conclusion that our current K-12 education system is failing to provide value for those not planning on continuing a formal education. There is a lot of work out there but less and less of America's youth wants to engage in any of the trades work that is increasingly being done by foreign laborers who are coming here to work in order that THEIR children won't have to do manual labor in the future.
This growing aversion to skilled hands on work is a real problem for a society that has equated manual labor with a kind of personal failing, just the term,"high skill" connotes a type of labor requiring vastly superior abilities. All labor not done by machines is skilled, the level of difficulty can be a determiner of compensation requirements but overall, skill denotes the acquisition of knowledge and an ability to reason, two things that employers say are in short supply.
For those who rail against the workers in lesser skilled employment as people lacking in motivation to "do better" in life there is little hope of them becoming part of a solution, instead, they feed the fires of employment discontent. Is it any wonder that so much of our youth think they are bound to be the next Steve Jobs, or the next "startup magnate," and failing that means a life of certain drudgery? We've become a society that is characterized by the notion of "High Tech or Bust", this has become our mantra for the youth to latch on to.
It's easy to blame the worker for his plight, not educated enough, not motivated enough, and always the lament about possessing lesser skills being a failing in and of itself. America has changed, and those things that used to make sense to us no longer seem sensible to the employer class. Training your own workers instead of pawning off the task to for-profit Lo-Tech schools, insisting upon a tax supported public education system to actually teach some hard skills, less globalism and more Americanism, more helpful and less self centered when faced with national scale problems, and lastly, less tolerant of a lopsided system of compensation.
There seems to be such hatred for anything that smacks of a collective, American's hate taxes, they hate their own government, they all too often hate each other, but they also hate to see the crumbling infrastructure of our roads, bridges, dams, sewers, water supply systems, and schools, they want government to "do something" but not be interfering in the process, they want the other guy to go to work, pay taxes, and "get off of welfare", but, they also support a system of education that renders up too many unemployable lost souls. And the worst paradox of all, the widespread notion that work has little monetary value unless it demands the utmost ability of a person.........
You raise some really good points. But just don't ever propose a solution that requires the assumption that the general public actually thinks more than 4 years in advance!
Given the current economic system with its rampant employment insecurity the general public probably does not think more then two weeks ahead. Long term thinking would be next year.
No. The private sector will continue to coddle/reward the highest performers, while largely ignoring (at best), the rest. Naturally, this will encourage our nation's limited supply of smart people to look beyond the low hanging fruit for opportunities. This is how it works in most developed nations, and it's difficult to change for fundamentally obvious reasons... At least, they should be obvious.
All they need to do is scrap the drug tests, and they can hire the best of the best. How many doctors and lawyers and securities brokers do you think would pass a drug test? Drugs are de facto if not de jure decriminalized in almost every state, and testing employee for drugs is like testing them for residual systemic alcohol or junk food or tobacco or staying up late at night.
Very good point. And for jobs that merely expect "basic math and reading skills" one cannot expect to locate a large contingent of "abstainers".
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