The disconnect between available jobs and the unemployed...

Discussion in 'Labor & Employment' started by SillyAmerican, Dec 12, 2016.

  1. SillyAmerican

    SillyAmerican Well-Known Member

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    On the December 12th edition of Meet the Press, guest Mike Rowe (host of "Dirty Jobs") makes the following comments:

    Should the U.S. be providing more of a focus on vocational training, and the job options available to those inclined to move in this direction? Have we spent too much time and energy steering people into pursuing a 4 year degree?
     
  2. Diuretic

    Diuretic Well-Known Member

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    I think that might be the case for many western industrialised nations. I know it is with my country. I might leave Germany and the Netherlands out of that equation though.
     
  3. Hotdogr

    Hotdogr Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I don't know if they already do this, but, I do think there should be some connection between federal education assistance and the ongoing requirements of the workforce. Industry should issue projections on their requirements, and those projections should drive available loans. For instance, if industry projects there will be a shortfall of HVAC technicians over the next 2 years, government should make loans easy to get for people to pursue that career path, and unless there is a projected need for "advanced flower arranging" graduates, there should be no easy to get federal loans available for those career paths.
     
  4. Deckel

    Deckel Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Just wanted to point out that I know someone whose job it is to manage live plants in malls and office buildings. She makes six figures.
     
  5. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    It's called relative importance. Just because one thing is more important than another thing does not mean we expend more money on the thing that's more important.
    So take food. No one can survive without food. Yet when you look at several poor developing countries, often times there are so many farmers growing food that the price drops and typical farmers live in poverty.
    There have been times during disasters or wars where there were food shortages and then food became extremely expensive.

    Should a worker be paid based on how much that work is valuable to society? Or should they be paid based on how much society values that individual to do the work? Not quite the same thing.
    I need food but I'm not quite sure I value you in particular deciding to start working to provide food for me.

    Obviously if there was a shortage of trash collectors, wages would rise. But how much would they rise? How much could the price rise until people decided they'd rather just try to take care of the problem themselves?
     
  6. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I've suspected the disconnect is more between how much these jobs are paying and how much skills prospective workers are expected to have.
    Employers want a skilled workforce, but they don't want to pay for it.

    Or maybe it's because they can't pay for it. At the same time the number of consumers has been going up, the amount of consumer spending per person has been going down. This has been a trend over the last ten years. Businesses are struggling to provide services but they can't charge the consumer too much, and, as a consequence, have to keep costs down and are limited in what they can pay their workers.

    This is a phenomena I've elaborated on a little more in another thread: It takes a lot of extra money to lubricate the economy
    if you want to understand how shrinking profit margins can hinder economic activity even in the face of increase quantity demand and larger potential customer pool
     
    Last edited: Sep 19, 2017
  7. squidward

    squidward Well-Known Member

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    individuals should focus on the training themselves to be productive and marketable.
     
  8. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    The other issue, among the labor pool, there may be a lot more riff-raff. To say it one way, "low-quality" workers. So employers use educational training requirements as a screen to help filter out potential less desirable applicants so they do not have to take on as much risk in hiring a potential unknown. That means that the overall quality of labor pool has a direct effect on economic efficiency (namely credentialism), even for those individuals in the labor pool who are good workers. Now they have to spend a lot of money, time, energy, and assume risk, just to try to set themselves apart from the less committed, less able parts of the workforce.

    According to Peter Capelli, the qualification gap between what employers want and what is available in the labor force has more to do with prior job experience than how much skills workers have from classroom settings.
    http://business.time.com/2012/06/04/the-skills-gap-myth-why-companies-cant-find-good-people/
     
    Last edited: Sep 19, 2017
  9. Old Man Fred

    Old Man Fred Well-Known Member

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    Vocational training is the most important education there is. 60-70% of people will own a home, and knowing how to maintain that home can save hundreds of thousands of dollars over a lifetime, drastically increase value and longevity, and improve energy efficiency.

    And it leads to a greater understanding of dozens of other subjects. It's a lot easier to engineer a product if you have an understanding of manufacturing and building things.
     

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