Americans not qualified for available manufacturing jobs

[blazespinnaker]

Re: Americans not qualified for available manufacturing jobs

I posted elsewhere in the thread with the Andy Grove article that I think the ability(if not the will) for US reindustrialization requires us to first answer the question of how we can turn(en masse) an out of work Starbucks Barrista with a BA in Art History into a well paid Nanotechnology Engineer.

I'm not confident we can.

We couldn't turn out of work steelworkers from Pittsuburg into Web Designers....they're all working at Wal Mart for minimum wage with lousy bennies......and that's if they're lucky.

I'm starting to think our future work force is going to look much like our current and unstable wealth distribution curve......with a small number of folks able to add incredibly high value and being paid accordingly(nanotechnologists, bleedying edge petroleum extraction engineers, life science/biotech studs, etc), a fast shrinking number of middle-class professionals drowning in student/housing debt having the rug pulled out from them via high level offshoring(lawyers, CPA/accountants, generic engineering, etc.), and an exploding number of folks at the bottom of the food chain with commoditized skills and obsolete/irrelevant education with high debt and a perpetual negative return on investment for it fighting for shrinking retail jobs with faster shrinking renumeration.

When I talk to young folks and learn about their shocking state of education debt combined with irrelevant degrees I just don't see how our existing higher education system is sustainable......just look at the recent example(NYTimes article) of a law school offering retroactive grade increases across the board to increase their competitiveness in a very soft job market...as if grade inflation will fix what is broken.

I use to criticise, mock, and worry about the Saudis funding their young citizens' university education, resulting in a country full of unemployable, frustrated, and restless islamic studies graduates........but in the US I wonder if it might be worse....since the student debt level is HUGE, cannot be forgiven under current bankruptcy law, and you simply swap out islamic studies for another degree that offers little to no tangible/relevant skillsets for the amount invested.

We've talked the US housing market crash to death(and it's continuing death spasms), but what of the US education market?

Since bailouts are the new black, I'm thinking $250+ billion or so to bail out US universities with an alternative energy research & development theme and push the sciences HARD again at the expense of underwater basket weaving.

Isn't the only way the US got on the moon in 1969 because of what US schools started to do by 1959(or earlier)?

+1

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: Americans not qualified for available manufacturing jobs

We need to find satisfying work for everyone.

What if there is not enough satisfying work to go around?

We need to restructure our economy so that everyone has a place in it

Yes -- the question is how. That is one of the most difficult questions of our time.

[blazespinnaker]

Re: Americans not qualified for available manufacturing jobs

I think the solution is to create massive 0% loans (or even slightly negative) for VC funds for non finance related companies. As long as you're making something, or providing a service, or getting something out of the ground .. or some other kind of real biz then VC companies should be able to use this line of credit to invest in you. The VC will get long term (10 years) stock in your company.

Even more ideal would be that 100% of accounting records (salaries, everything) should totally available. Kind of like your quick books should give read only access to everyone.

This way other people can learn to copy your business if it's working. They could also check up on you to make sure you're not scamming somehow. Before you complain about that, trust me, in the internet space it's already like that.

And then the government should create a website where people can go to peruse these businesses and economists from universities can rank them by which is actually restructuring the economy in a positive way.

[Master Shake]

Re: Americans not qualified for available manufacturing jobs

great catch, Master Shake. This describes the ongoing splitting of the global workforce into the economically irrelevant (the vast majority) and the knowledge worker / well moneyed.

More and more, we have a world where you either have deep skills or lots of money. Because of automation and efficiencies from the internet, your skills have become deeper and deeper if you want to join the middle/upper classes.

We need to restructure our economy so that everyone has a place in it - and I don't think that means make work / menial jobs like many are proposing.

We need to find satisfying work for everyone.

Kurt Vonnegut wrote about this in one of his earlier works, Player Piano. A good read if you can find it.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: Americans not qualified for available manufacturing jobs

I think the solution is to create massive 0% loans (or even slightly negative) for VC funds for non finance related companies.

Just because ample VC funding is available does not mean that there is sufficient meaningful work to go around. We certainly saw that in the VC funding hay days of the 1990's in Silicon Valley and around Route 128.

[jk]

Re: Americans not qualified for available manufacturing jobs

i think lakedaemonian brought up an important point in mentioning the burden of student loans. HIGHER EDUCATION HAS BEEN A FIRE ECONOMY BENEFICIARY as much as housing. we still have unaffordable housing because housing was bought on leverage. and the availability of student loans has made education equally unaffordable. housing prices rose much faster than inflation, and so did education prices. current all-in cost for ONE year at a top tier university or college = over $50k. state university tuition and fees have been rising as well, all the more so as states enter budgetary crises and look for additional sources of revenue. [average cost at a state college is up 6.5% in the last year alone.] and, as was pointed out, student loan debt is a burden that cannot be wiped out via bankruptcy.

we need affordable housing. and we need affordable - and useful - education.

[blazespinnaker]

Re: Americans not qualified for available manufacturing jobs

Yeah, it's a little worrisome.

It'd be nice if we could structure our economy (at least partially) around enlightenment in some way.

Basically pay people to go to school and learn about history and science.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: Americans not qualified for available manufacturing jobs

Yeah, it's a little worrisome.

It'd be nice if we could structure our economy (at least partially) around enlightenment in some way.

Basically pay people to go to school and learn about history and science.

Enlightenment -- that would be nice, he said wistfully.

[jk]

Re: Americans not qualified for available manufacturing jobs

Enlightenment -- that would be nice, he said wistfully.

when gandhi was asked what he thought of western civilization, he said he thought it would be a good idea.

[ASH]

Re: Americans not qualified for available manufacturing jobs

I posted elsewhere in the thread with the Andy Grove article that I think the ability(if not the will) for US reindustrialization requires us to first answer the question of how we can turn(en masse) an out of work Starbucks Barrista with a BA in Art History into a well paid Nanotechnology Engineer.

I'm not confident we can.

...

I use to criticise, mock, and worry about the Saudis funding their young citizens' university education, resulting in a country full of unemployable, frustrated, and restless islamic studies graduates........but in the US I wonder if it might be worse....since the student debt level is HUGE, cannot be forgiven under current bankruptcy law, and you simply swap out islamic studies for another degree that offers little to no tangible/relevant skillsets for the amount invested.

We've talked the US housing market crash to death(and it's continuing death spasms), but what of the US education market?

Since bailouts are the new black, I'm thinking $250+ billion or so to bail out US universities with an alternative energy research & development theme and push the sciences HARD again at the expense of underwater basket weaving.

Isn't the only way the US got on the moon in 1969 because of what US schools started to do by 1959(or earlier)?

That was a great post on the other thread, and here as well.

There's no way to say this that is very politic, so I'll just say it: for the most part, you can't take just anyone who is studying underwater basket-weaving, push them to study science and engineering, and get much economic impact. I used to think the problem was that students were encouraged to "follow their bliss" and seek intellectual fulfillment in college, rather than trying to acquire skills with which to earn a living. I used to think that all we needed do is push young people to study practical pursuits to increase their earning potential, and that the proliferation of underwater basket-weaving degrees had to do with out-of-date and over-indulgent parents who thought that any college degree was a ticket to the good life (as it had been in the 50's-70's). I used to think that students study underwater basket-weaving because at that age few think of college in terms of their future financial well-being, and quite naturally, most prefer lighter homework. But I don't think this any longer. Now I think the reason we have so many degrees in underwater basket-weaving is simply because we're trying to educate too many people, with the attainment of a 4-year degree being the goal more than what comes after that degree.

At 35, I've only been working six years, but it has been long enough to notice that the ratio of useful engineers to people with engineering degrees isn't that great. My wife, who managed a software engineering group at her last job, observed the same thing. A friend who works at GE Healthcare also talks about this. Even amongst those who chose to study science and engineering -- presumably because of some native aptitude or interest -- and passed all the necessary coursework, there's quite a wide range of ability. I'm not sure how many more useful engineers we'd produce simply by pushing more students to study engineering.

I agree that we need to fund science and engineering at the university level, because having that source of trained workers and innovation is a necessary prerequisite for growing the economy and staying competitive. However, it isn't a sufficient condition. As Grove's article pointed out on the other thread, American innovation no longer results in lots of American employment. And I have no doubt about the answer to your question -- no, we absolutely can't turn (en masse) an out of work Starbucks Barrista with a BA in Art History into a well paid Nanotechnology Engineer. But the problem isn't that he/she has a BA in Art History. Somehow (and this is why the Grove essay depressed me), we've got to find a way to create well-paid American jobs for competent, hard-working people who maybe won't be generating a lot of nanotechnology IP themselves, regardless of access to training. What we're missing is a mass market for skilled technical labor, but not precisely engineering; we can't replace that part of the labor market with training or jobs targeted at the PhD level. And as long as skilled technical labor is so much cheaper overseas, I don't see how we can solve the problem without significant interference with the 'free' market.

[radon]

Re: Americans not qualified for available manufacturing jobs

I would agree. But surely that level of math skills is not the norm for the cohort?

Then again, maybe it is...I once had a temp fill in for my vacationing assistant. I asked her to prepare a cost document and manually on the hard copy insert a column showing the percentages of each line item. Even though she was a high school graduate she didn't know how to calculate a percentage...

Many years ago I had the misfortune of screening candidates for a few programmer/analyst type positions. One of the things I asked them to do during the interview was to write a program that would calculate the distance between two points. I was surprised at the number of university graduates who could not do it. I don't think it is just a problem with high school.

[radon]

Re: Americans not qualified for available manufacturing jobs

And as long as it's so much cheaper to do this type of labor overseas, I don't see how we can solve the problem without significant interference with the 'free' market.

In the end I don't think overseas manufacturers will matter. Many of these jobs are disappearing because of the relentless march of automation, and not everyone is cut out to be a "Nanotechnology Engineer".

[ASH]

Re: Americans not qualified for available manufacturing jobs

American "employers" are always saying that. What they really should say is we cant find enough PHDs with 10 years experience in the field for minimum wage in the US.

The small business for which I work probably isn't representative of anything, but I did hire a student just out of school with no experience applicable to the job. She had a chemistry degree, with no background in electrical engineering, and no prior experience with circuits or electrical test instruments. She did have a single semester of semiconductor device physics under her belt, but not a useful level of knowledge ("useful" would have been the ability to look at test data and tie the measurements to the device structure -- i.e. enough familiarity to diagnose problems). But I hired her for a semiconductor device test position, because she was smart, engaged, and came well recommended by her professors. Now, a year later, this new hire is programming automation of the test equipment and calling my attention to patterns in the data that I would otherwise overlook.

It's too bad that more companies don't have the opportunity to train people into positions. The way I see it, you often have to hire experience for senior positions, because (a) you can't train somebody on the job for high level engineering design work, and (b) often the reason you're hiring somebody is because you don't have the necessary skill set inside the company, anyway. But for junior positions, I feel that hiring "smart and engaged" is an awful lot better than hiring experience. If the position allows it, you can always train somebody -- but you can't make them smart, and you can't give them the right attitude.

[ASH]

Re: Americans not qualified for available manufacturing jobs

In the end I don't think overseas manufacturers will matter. Many of these jobs are disappearing because of the relentless march of automation, and not everyone is cut out to be a "Nanotechnology Engineer".

Well yes -- that automated future was discussed on an earlier thread... Then everyone can be out of work across the world, and not just in the rich countries!

Perhaps the overseas manufacturing won't matter in the end because transportation fuel costs will rise too high.

[blazespinnaker]

Re: Americans not qualified for available manufacturing jobs

In the end I don't think overseas manufacturers will matter. Many of these jobs are disappearing because of the relentless march of automation, and not everyone is cut out to be a "Nanotechnology Engineer".

The frightening problem here is the old saying "idle hands do the devil's work". If people do not have jobs, then they're likely to get into all sorts of mischief. I personally believe this is why we have such a bad drug problem in Mexico these days, because the demand for their product has been increasing as we get more and more idle time on our hands.

Perhaps what we need are vast complexes of "safe injection sites" so people can go there and hook themselves up. Some people say drugs are bad, but maybe it's a way of dealing with a large portion of society that doesn't want to (or can not) find satisfaction in other ways.

One thing you can say about junkies, is they don't really consume a lot in the way of resources. I think really, this could do so much - it would reduce crime, remove a wide swath of unproductive people from the general economy.

Hey, there we go, that's a possible business model for the new economy.