60 Mins Piece: Can't Find Decent Employees?

[Paul F.]

Most "shop trig" is not "advanced"... it's pretty darn basic right-triangles.
And modern CNC programming is "conversational" at a controller, and doesn't require ANY trig.

Machine shop owner I talk to occasionally has more problems finding employees that can pass a drug test, and actually show up to work than finding people with entry-level skills... though that can be a challenge too, since basic addition, subtraction, etc are required. So is not showing up to work stoned.

[lazydays]

Where I worked last they had trouble finding people who knew the alphabet to work in the filing room. Granted it was an entry level job paying near minimum wage but it also came with vacation time, sick time, a 401k plan, and the job took place in a back room where a radio was allowed. All they needed was to be able to alphabetize...

[Tiki2000]

The business highlighted was in Nevada (Las Vegas I believe). I think what I took away from the article was that the business worked with a state program to educate entry level workers. That if the business had to pay for educating the workers without the state program, it couldn't.

The further take away I had from the article was that there are millions of unfilled jobs, but an available workforce without the basic skills to do the job & employers who are unwilling to train them in the skills.

It would be hard to say whether the $12/hr entry level job highlighted was a 'good paying' job (called head of household jobs locally) without knowing the economics of the area. Quickly running the numbers, I don't think I could pay a mortgage & car payment on it.

[lazydays]

On the flip side of my last comment I did spend some time looking for a new job myself. I found that many employers expected fluency in multiple programming languages, hardware maintenance, and web design all for wages in the $12-$15 range.

[decay]

Employers expect more for less now that they can pick & choose from a larger pool of unemployed who are willing to give up more just to get a job.

The facts shared here about finding good employees is just as sad.

Wages should fit the skill set and demands of a job. Sh#tty jobs that nobody wants should pay more.

I can imagine both sides of the coin.

And then there's employee theft, which I have seen first hand.

[Tiki2000]

Wonderful thing is employers can ask for anything they want. Its a question whether they can find someone with what they want, at the wage they want to pay. Also, IF they find that person, how long is the employee going to stay with that employer...

In my mind, the business gets the level of employee they are willing to pay for...

[M A V I C]

graylocks wrote:
[quote=M A V I C]
Didn't see it, but where was the story based? $12/hr is pretty good entry level pay in a lot of the country.

i think chopper's point is that $12 is not good pay for someone with the necessary skill set for that job. might be for someone willing and able to train for that job, though.
Even in the Seattle area, to get a job at $12/hr you're going to need some skills. I had friend in high school who didn't even take the higher level math classes and dropped out to run CNC. He did the math easily, just picking it up as he went along. He didn't make much at first, minimum wage perhaps. But as he got better, he was quickly making $35/hr. I imagine the job highlighted is entry level, meaning, as another mentioned, a high rejection level. As their output quality increases, I imagine their wage will also go up.

Tiki2000 wrote: It would be hard to say whether the $12/hr entry level job highlighted was a 'good paying' job (called head of household jobs locally) without knowing the economics of the area. Quickly running the numbers, I don't think I could pay a mortgage & car payment on it.

I doubt there's an entry level job in the country that could make a mortgage and car payment. Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I don't think everyone has a need to buy a house as soon as they move out of mom & dad's. I also don't think they need to be buying expensive cars. $12/hr is $25k/yr. (And I presume their wage would go up a fair amount after a few months.) I checked the LV craigslist, seems like renting a room for $300/mo is reasonable. That's $3600/yr. Maybe tack on $100/mo for a car payment... that's $1200/yr. Those combined are $4800/yr... one should be able to afford that on $25k/yr.

[archipirata]

I get a lot of opportunities to work with incoming college freshman and I can tell you for a fact that compared to 20 years ago the the current kids are downright ignorant. They lack many basic math, science, and communication skills and most are downright disrespectful to everyone. Our DNA hasn't changed. And not to get political but somewhere along the line our society f$%#ed up educating and socializing our children.

[JoeM]

Both I and my wife, who is an HR exec. in medical device manufacturing, saw the show. She would agree with cbelt3's comments above about applicants. She mentioned any serious manufacturing company here in the USA today needs to have some sort of training program in place in order to function because applicants cannot run the various machines.

I can tell you when I was teaching audio engineering at The Center For The Media Arts in NYC back in the late 80's, I wrote a specialized course in tape editing (yes, tape) for mostly dance music and hip hop mixer wanna-bes (the majority of students in those days at the school) that was based around using a ruler to measure tape length as it related to BPM and time signatures. With some basic calculations, a mixer could create a masking tape template, then measure and rearrange a mix by cutting and re-editing a two track.

Well more than half of the college-age students who took that course didn't know any subdivisions on a ruler smaller than 1/2 or 1/4 inch and many couldn't use a ruler at all.

I can only imagine what goes on when some of these applicants show up for a job that requires any type of math calculations.

[lazydays]

I had the opportunity to tour a local public school and I was amazed by the amount of electronics in the classroom. Middle school students were making their presentations using state of the art projectors and Microsoft PowerPoint. Rather than being impressed I simply wondered how much time was spent playing with these gizmos vs learning. I am all for equipping both students and teachers with the tools they need but I suspect they sometimes go too far.

Also, I enjoy watching vintage tv shows and I am struck by the contrast with current tv. The older shows (that I watch) demonstrate basic respect for people, especially children for adults, where current programming seems to glorify lying and disrespect. I realize the older shows did not represent how things really were but the current shows certainly do encourage poor behavior.

Now get off my lawn!