What a great question. Here we are with an education system designed for academia instead of crafts. And there is taught a bias against working with one's hands, as well as presenting an excuse to delay entry into the workforce by more education. The one this piece doesn't mention is the inability of high school graduates to read, write, and perform basic math. Read more @ http://dailysignal.com/2015/04/06/w...hy-are-so-many-employers-unable-to-fill-jobs/
I can't imagine a high school graduate in this day and age not being able to read or do basic math. I don't know of a state that doesn't requires some sort of standardized test for graduation, and those cannot be passed without reading/basic math. That said, other than that I agree with you that our system is not designed to create craftsman, which is a shame.
i wonder why the question being asked isn't why aren't these jobs that are so high in demand paying higher wages, if truck drivers and welders were making 6 figure incomes than those jobs would be filled real quick. So why would an employer knowingly pay his employees so little in terms how in demand his skills are? Seems like the "free market" has a flaw or two.
How does overstock.com deliver 10 file cabinets from California to North Carolina for no shipping charge and truck drivers make $100K a year? The flaw in the free market has always been consumers are tight wads.
The private sector delegated training for it's workforce to the government. The main reason is because legislation for retirement savings is broken.
one of the issues is that these dumb-ass college grads expect to slide into the CEO's chair right out of school. Working with your hands is an honorable thing to do. But why get their hands dirty? Everything has been served to them up to that point, and they know little about making an effort for themselves. They look down on blue collar skills.
Correct. They KNOW that it is their right to leave college at a starting salary of a minimum of seventy-five thousand per year with perks. Then they hit the job market and discover that if everyone and their pet have a bare bones college degree nowadays then nobody is special in the general jobs market. The thing is that none of them know how to compete since leftists have abolished as much competition as possible during one's school years because competition is damaging to the student's self-esteem. All any of them have any training for is to be led by the hand from task to task and from unearned reward to unearned reward. The real world must come as a tremendous shock to these adult-children in their post college existence years.
Color me evil, but I believe the first place Little League team should be the only team getting a trophy.
Companies should offer appropriate job training if they need certain kinds of workers or agree to repay the costs for the worker, as long as they are employed repaying loans.
How much does a college educated person earn compared to a truck driver? There's no question that it's skilled labor either way, but there's a difference. http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_chart_001.htm "How much is higher education worth in cold hard money? A college master's degree is worth $1.3 million more in lifetime earnings than a high school diploma, according to a recent report from the U.S. Census Bureau." http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/moneymatters/a/edandearnings.htm In one sense or another it's like playing with the market. You might lose some money now, but you can expect to make more in the long run. That in of itself isn't so much a problem. You don't have to make millions of dollars to live a comfortable life. Trade schools can be a cheaper alternative to that. But I'm willing to bet that those differences in income are going to matter when it comes to making sure you can live. The money makers are involved with the manipulation of money, manufacturing jobs just don't pay as much. At the end of the day, if you want people to take manufacturing jobs, they need to compete with wall street broking in terms of pay and benefits, something that's hard to do.
I live in Vegas where most of the janitorial staffs are Hispanic. From reports I've read, they read and write English better than their non-Hispanic counterparts. Most cashiers wouldn't be able to make correct change if the machines didn't figure it out for them.
well the op says that a person certified in a job like electrician plumber or truck driver can "get a job in 48hrs" suggesting a massive skill shortage in those fields due to the fact that american children do not get certified in those fields, implying that its because their lazy and spoiled and all "want to be ceo". but this is entirely misleading untrue and false. the fact is these "low skill" jobs are usually controlled by paying the driver as little as possible giving as few benefits as possible and severely limiting things you wuld consider normal like promotions pay raises and seniority. meaning a person who works as truck driver for 40 years, doesn't attain any critical or important skills past his initial certification. As oppose to an architect engineer or doctor who learns more and become more valuable. with the more years of experience he gets. Being an experienced truck driver however doesn't make you all that more valuable because someone who just started can do the same basic job ,in same basic parameters. so these jobs usually end up being protected by labor unions who tries to make sure drivers aren't working 90hrs for minimum wage and pays them less for overtime than they should be getting paid normally, and secures benefits. because the employer can simply find a newbie who will take the abuse if that driver doesn't like that job. these low skill jobs have many openings because they have incredibly high turnover rates, meaning the employees are so abused most quit shortly after taking the position. and the ones who dont rarely if ever move up in the organization. Compared to a even a crappy terrible place to work like mcdonalds where you can eventually become an owner wihtout going too college or even become ceo after 40 years, starting off as the guy who mops the bathrooms the question is why are republicans trying too crush labor unions? 36 reasons why you should thank a union http://www.unionplus.org/about/labor-unions/36-reasons-thank-union
There are roughly the same number of truck drivers as there are fast food workers in the US--3.5 million per http://www.statista.com/statistics/...oyees-in-us-fast-food-restaurants-since-2002/ and http://www.truckinfo.net/trucking/stats.htm Also per the second link, 97% operate 20 or fewer while 90% operate 6 or fewer trucks, and owner operators only make slightly more than employed operators with an industry-wide profit margin of 4.8%. I do not see that unions have a lot to offer truck drivers in terms of wages. If overstock would charge me the cost of shipping those file cabinets, I might decide to buy locally instead, they lose their competitive edge, they fold and all the drivers who they contracted with loses business. The free market largely works in opposition to higher wages, especially in discretionary goods.
saying 90% of trucking companies are small just means there's alot of small companies it doesn't say how much revenue they bring in or how many trucks are owned by major corporations. or what % of the market they control if all 90% of those companies control less than 1% of the market (which it might) what difference does it make if theres alot of them? but trucking jobs has an extremely high turnover rate when it comes too employment. the problem is not, that there's not enough people getting certified. or that not enough americans have the skills to be one. It's that nobody wants too do the work and because the job is so menial that anyone can do it they don't have too pay their drivers more they just have too fire them, or wait until they quit and hire new ones. If anything encouraging politically that more people to get a truckers license would only increase the pool of new talent that already exists and make truckers jobs less valuable and actually allow those companies like UPS who made $48 billion last year to pay their drivers even less. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trucking_industry_in_the_United_States
UPS makes their revenue off pilots as much as drivers. Companies like that's profits are determined by sorting out the logistics of how to do what they do at a price point that is acceptable to the market. All those free shipping deals at Christmas on the internet to make those companies profitable come from the pockets of someone else other than the consumer. Consumers demand free or low cost shipping or else they will not buy from internet companies. It all goes back to my original post. I don't care if the driver makes $30K a year or $130K a year, I want my file cabinets purchased and delivered from California at a certain price point or I won't buy them. It is not a matter of evil owners oppressing their workers--it is a matter of competition for customers who can and, more often than not, do go with the best deal they can find in what is now a global marketplace. The only meaningful difference between the profitability of UPS compared to the profitability a local messenger service is volume.
truckers making 100k per year (gross) are working 100 hour weeks, that's how it's done. That's just $12 an hour base pay, for 40 hours, then $18 an hour for 20 hours, $24 per hour for 20 hours, and $30 per hour for the remaining 20 hours. if you think that's a great life, go for it.
your explaining why UPS and the poeple who run similair companies aren't evil. And that's okay considering many people are saying anyone who is rich will burn in hell (jesus) but im not talking about whether they were smart or dumb or good or bad. I'm not even directly trying too reference the trucking industry as a whole much less just one corporation. im talking about low skill jobs as a whole, which we mostly saw vanish after offshoring got through with us. i also dont want to get into profit margins and "whether they can" pay them more or theyre just being greedy. because isn't a recent strike were discussing all the things mentioned in the OP electricians welders, nurses etc. and i dont think either one of us wants to go through every corporation in every industry's profit margins. what im saying is that encouraging people to get certified in a low skill job like truck driving whether through public funding going to free certification or trade/technical school, or just a change in culture of encouraging all children too get some kind of technical certificate. for many reasons, the main one being, is that it wont solve their employment problem because they don't have one. if they did, they'd quickly offer higher salaries for such a miserable job, that has 136 people quit for every 100 it hires. But they won't simply because there's tons of people with that certification already who don't want too do the job because it's awful and it doesn't match the pay. all that would happen if more people got certified would be that the current employers would be able too take advantage of these employees even more so, lower wages longer hours less benefits etc etc.... and their wouldn't be any increase in employment the problem with basic supply and demand which republicans have been running around like they've discovered the final solution to the theory of everything, is just a basic guideline a 101 class and in this example: low skill work forces. it fails, One main reason is that they're are simply more people than jobs too do. which is commonly mistaken for unemployment, but I believe that for the past few decades their has literally been no reason that "everyone" has too work If your looking for a solution it would be too unionize these jobs [video=youtube;-GQIOYCfFE8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GQIOYCfFE8[/video]
See this thread: the myth of the "skills gap" Paul Krugman pointed out: The belief that America suffers from a severe skills gap is one of those things that everyone important knows must be true, because everyone they know says its true. Its a prime example of a zombie idea an idea that should have been killed by evidence, but refuses to die... Yes, workers with a lot of formal education have lower unemployment than those with less, but thats always true, in good times and bad. The crucial point is that unemployment remains much higher among workers at all education levels than it was before the financial crisis. The same is true across occupations: workers in every major category are doing worse than they were in 2007. Moreover, by blaming workers for their own plight, the skills myth shifts attention away from the spectacle of soaring profits and bonuses even as employment and wages stagnate. Of course, that may be another reason corporate executives like the myth so much.
Lets be frank here lets say John Doe is is High School, an average student say a 2.0 GPA and did okay in mathematics and other classes able to pass the minimum standards to graduate with some leeway and he wants to work in modern manufacturing and his IQ is 100. And now this often requires an associates degree in a STEM education demanding above average mathematics skills and ability what chance does he have of entering that field or any of a technical nature? For them Truck Driving might be a very good career meeting their ability to learn and gain the necessary skills. Lets stop assuming every student can enter college and perform at a level that is unreasonable and if they get a Liberal Arts degree ,most likely, will that really be $1.3 million more in a lifetime. Or say they enter a field like Social Work they may just get a step up to get jobs not requiring a college degree and offer some more options but not as much as they might in a trade or just going right into the work force and get a good work record. Employers do sometimes set the requirements for a job over what is needed to do the job also or won't bother to train and commit to keeping the employee long term.
