60 Mins Piece: Can't Find Decent Employees?

[graylocks]

Bosco wrote:
Another thing to consider:

Kids entering the work force have been raised by parents who have been overextended on so many levels. They don't have the time or energy (or, care) to focus on their kids education or behavior. The parents are doing the the best they can to provide for their families while neglecting key patenting skills.

Unfortunately, their kids have also learned to do the same... Do just enough to get by. Don't think. Just do. Jump through some hoops and be like everyone else.

this isn't quite working for me. yes, i think a lot of the work ethic, or lack thereof, has to do with parents and many struggle. however, too many parents have screwed up priorities and struggle to provide lots of cable TV options, cell phones, big screen TVs and other toys. parenting skills are neglected in the face of warped priorities.

[JoeM]

Gee Whiz!... it's all gone downhill since the Beav:



And now, instead of..... we got....

[wowzer]

cbelt3 wrote:
free- High Schools, even in heavy manufacturing areas, no longer provide *any* trade instruction unless it's through special 'magnet' programs. And then only to a select group of students.

No Child Left Behind in filling out a McDonald's application.

I agree that the no child left behind law has essentially dedicated the school's resources to the lowest performing percentage of students. As long as you pass tests, the public schools in NYC wont dedicate 1 additional penny in your direction. However, if you have any deficits (speech, language, and etc), they will go as far as having an individual tutor/teacher sit besides you in class to help. I don't know how the programs work or not, but as a former NYC resident, I was very peeved, when they shut down our magnet program to pay for these costs. The result of these actions led directly (and this was the sole reason) to my moving out to Long Island to a good school district.

[NewtonMP2100]

yes, they are hard to find.....lookin' round work right now and they do not exist.......

[Ted King]

Understandably, there are a lot of anecdotal accounts in this thread, but I don't think it's justifiable to make many conclusions based on that. I wonder if anyone has done in-depth studies of the relevant factors.

Per free market principles, if there is a surplus supply of people with skills that an employer wants, then we are told that the economics of supply and demand means that the wages offered to those workers will go down. But here we have a demand for workers with certain skills that is greater than the supply. So by free market principles shouldn't the wages go up? (I actually have some ideas, but I'm interested in what other people think.)

[vision63]

Ted King wrote:
Understandably, there are a lot of anecdotal accounts in this thread, but I don't think it's justifiable to make many conclusions based on that. I wonder if anyone has done in-depth studies of the relevant factors.

Per free market principles, if there is a surplus supply of people with skills that an employer wants, then we are told that the economics of supply and demand means that the wages offered to those workers will go down. But here we have a demand for workers with certain skills that is greater than the supply. So by free market principles shouldn't the wages go up? (I actually have some ideas, but I'm interested in what other people think.)

Because there isn't a free market. Just the idea of one. The rich get rich. This is a country full of hustlers.

[Ted King]

wowzer wrote:

I agree that the no child left behind law has essentially dedicated the school's resources to the lowest performing percentage of students. As long as you pass tests, the public schools in NYC wont dedicate 1 additional penny in your direction. However, if you have any deficits (speech, language, and etc), they will go as far as having an individual tutor/teacher sit besides you in class to help. I don't know how the programs work or not, but as a former NYC resident, I was very peeved, when they shut down our magnet program to pay for these costs. The result of these actions led directly (and this was the sole reason) to my moving out to Long Island to a good school district.

No Child Left Behind had laudable goals but to even hope to reach those goals (if they are even attainable no matter what you do) without reducing resources for kids who are not struggling, NCLB needed to include more funding. They didn't do that, they kept the requirements in place, but didn't produce the funding.

The way the NCLB law was written, school districts face some pretty severe repercussions if the lowest performing students scores do not keep improving, but there is no meaningful consequence if the middle and highest performing students scores are stagnant or decrease. That's a formula that just begs district administrators (whose jobs are literally on the line if they don't meet NCLB mandates) to concentrate resources on those lowest performing kids even though it hurts the other students. The advent of the near-depression recession leading to severely reduced funding for most schools greatly exacerbated the problem.

[TLB]

chopper wrote:
Requiring someone to know how to code CNC, mic out pieces and set up a lathe correctly before you'll give them $12 an hour seems like an absurdity.

Take away the CNC part and I learned that in 8th grade. Even those on a college prep track were required to take woodshop, machine shop and drafting in our school district. :oldfogey:

In this area that pay sounds like good money. My daughter has an advanced degree, diverse skill set and math through calculus and yet just got her first job paying more than $12/hr--5 years after earning her degree. This "dream job" is a whopping $15/hr with benefits. She has worked at least two jobs, 50-60 hours a week for over 8 years. That is the best she can do unless she moves out of the area, which she was getting ready to do before this opportunity came up. Prior to that she was constrained by a drawn out divorce that kept her here.

[Ted King]

TLB wrote:
In this area that pay sounds like good money.

That is a very important factor to keep in mind. $12 hour is much better pay in rural Arkansas than it is in San Francisco.

[vision63]

Ted King wrote:
[quote=TLB]
In this area that pay sounds like good money.

That is a very important factor to keep in mind. $12 hour is much better pay in rural Arkansas than it is in San Francisco.
I could ask my cousins in Pine Bluff.