Mike Rowe get's it.

[Benton]

(12-21-2015, 02:20 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: There are empty jobs, though my statement will be contrary to what Au is saying. The jobs Mike is talking about are skilled positions. They may not require a four year degree, but they do often require a trade school and/or a legitimate apprenticeship. These are things that are lacking in this country. There are things being done in an attempt to correct it, but for so many of these positions there are no longer enough people qualified to take on the role. Where I work, for instance, we have two jobs that have been open for over a month that require such skills, but they haven't had enough qualified applicants apply to even close the jobs and have interviews.

There are unskilled jobs that pay a pittance all over the place that people sneer at, and there are skilled jobs that pay better that people aren't qualified for. At least that's what I have been seeing based upon job openings in my area.

That seems to be what's happening, just from my observations.

I think a lot of it is the balance between education and getting a degree. I had an intern once who has since graduated with a journalism degree from a pretty solid J school. And the person couldn't write for anything. Couldn't take notes. Didn't know how to source material or vette a source. Didn't know anything about the software most of the print industry uses. Had never used a camera outside of their phone. I asked casually what the bulk of the 4 years were? General studies and liable laws.

The person had spent somewhere around $70-80,000 getting a degree and whoever hired them would have to teach them everything. It's ridiculous. As the guy who would get stuck with part of that training, I'd rather hire somebody off the street with no degree and no bad habits who is at least teachable.

We've got lots of people with low skill or no skill that don't have the training for jobs like Mike's talking about (I think) because we don't teach kids skills. We teach them a butt load of general information that may or may not have anything to do with being able to do a job.