Tuesday, June 28, 2016

Blaming the Employers... Again...

Amazing...  They are reporting that unemployment rates are high for:
  • The poorly educated
  • The young people
  • The single adults
  • Communities of Color
MP Look Who Has Been Left Out


So if you are young, unskilled / under educated and can not commit to a serious relationship, you are less likely to get and keep a job.  "Stop the Presses !!!"


And their solution again is to blame the employers!!!


My answer stays they same: Hold the schools and parents accountable to getting these kids successfully through High School, and keep them from getting pregnant until they have a start on a career.
CRPE Study Results - See pg 17
Star Trib 50 percent graduate



Thoughts?

22 comments:

  1. Here is a new book that can be read online for free. You could update your talking points about how parents and schools could do a better job preparing children for success.

    HELPING CHILDREN SUCCEED

    The first half of the book is about early childhood development and possible interventions. Starting with chapter 12 it is more about K-12 education.

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  2. I don't think the point should be to blame folks. And a lot depends on how one looks at things. I hear employers complain a lot that they can't find workers. Being the market guy I really am in my heart, I suspect a large part of that is due to an unwillingness of employers to pay the wages skilled workers demand. They find that in a recessionary economy, then can do ok, not by expanding but by keeping costs down. See my favorite "Wait and See" video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tw688Kbjy4
    which I think it tells us so much about how business can prosper in a slow economy.

    And the street has two ways. Just as business is unwilling to pay more for more skilled workers, workers are discouraged from acquiring better skills which they are unconvinced will bring them a better paycheck.

    FDR famously said we have nothing to fear but fear itself. What FDR didn't say, or maybe didn't understand, living in an era which whatever it's short term economic distress, still benefited from a fundamental optimism, is how terrifying and debilitating fear can be, and how perversely attractive strategies for evading the effects of fear, can be.

    --Hiram

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  3. Wait and See Video

    "workers are discouraged from acquiring better skills which they are unconvinced will bring them a better paycheck."

    And yet the MP graphs show clearly that education and skills lead to job security... Not sure how to convince fear filled people if that data does not convince them.

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  4. Laurie,
    I would love to read more books by Paul Tough. Remember that he wrote Whatever It Takes about the HCZ.

    But remember that the HCZ only worked because they are non-Union. Personnel are paid what they are worth and are fired if they fail to perform. And, Parents need to perform or they are booted.

    Just giving Education Minnesota more power and money is not going to improve things.

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  5. And yet the MP graphs show clearly that education and skills lead to job security

    None of the graphs, it seems to me, indicate precisely that. And anecdotally, it seems to me, as more and more college graduates have difficulty finding jobs, the link between education and jobs, if not job security, seems increasingly tenuous. These days, more than at any other point in my lifetime, even the concept of a job, as something with security, seems to be under fire. True or not, the idea that we are shifting to a "gig" economy seems to be gaining in acceptance.

    --Hiram

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  6. EW takes on GIG

    By the way, if this GIG economy takes off it will be even more important that people keep their knowledge, skills, communication, etc in peak form.

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  7. What is suspect is happening is knowledge and skills aren't valued by many in quite the the way they were. For one thing, what people need to know and be skilled at is changing with increasing rapidity.

    I don't mean to suggest that these things aren't important. What I do suspect, however is that businesses in this environment tend to use lack of skill on the part of the work force as an excuse for putting off expansion. The current fashion for protectionism among our political leaders is evidence of that.

    --Hiarm

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  8. More Excellent Data

    And I agree that having a degree isn't everything.

    My Engineering degrees are ~26 years old and my MBA is ~16 years old... The question is what am I doing every year to keep my knowledge and skills current and marketable...

    Many employees seem to be happy just doing their job... And then they are surprised when they are laid off and the new hiring managers aren't impressed with their decades old qualification and knowledge.

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  9. My previous employer had no problem with expansion and contraction... They paid well and would go from ~650 employees to ~1,000 employees/contract and back again within an ~8 year cycle depending on the business cycle. It was hardest on manufacturing, assembly and some design personnel.

    Since I was there ~16 years I got used to big swings in and big swings out.

    The challenge of course is that many employers and Liberals would consider this model unacceptable. They want stability and commitment to the employees. Which of course limits expansion in up cycles.

    So do we want companies to expand/shrink personnel rapidly as the market swings?
    If so, then we need to make it easier and less expensive for them to do so.

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  10. I look at Donald Trump. Back in the 20th century he built stuff. Not great stuff, maybe; the hotel business is not a great generator of wealth, and many of his properties he ran into the ground, but the guy did deserve an E for effort. But since them, perhaps frightened of the challenges of the 21st century, he has retreated to licensing and making personal appearances. That has happened to all capitalists, but it has happened to many of them and it helps to explain the deterioration of the economy.

    --Hiram

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  11. I have read the 2 most recent paul tough books and don't recall anything in them about getting rid of unions as the key to improving education. They didn't make any mention of decreasing the impact of unions at the
    generation next
    conference this morning either.

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  12. Unions can stay as long as they stop putting the wants of adult employees ahead of the needs of students. Imagine a Teacher's Union who put the kids first... They may say...

    "You want to make more money and have a more secure job... Start lobbying to get into the classrooms/schools with the kids who need the best Teachers. And successfully improve the capabilities of these kids."

    Or maybe...

    "So you have been teaching for 20 yrs and have a Masters degree, and yet your results are poor compared to your peers and the students /parents say that you are disorganized and communicate poorly... You are fired."

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  13. Technically it was the Chancellor of the NY School District that told HCZ that they would likely have to build their own school building because the Union member Teachers were working to sabotage the program which was operating within a city school at the time.

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  14. Hiram,
    If anything is harming the US, it is the beliefs of the author of the MP article and people like him. This overwhelming desire by some people to try to legislate higher wages, more benefits and higher income security for employees with low knowledge, skills, commitment, etc.

    Per the BLS source above, wages, benefits and security are fine for most educated capable employees. The question is how do we convince the low knowledge, low skill and low commitment citizens to change their beliefs and start improving themselves and their capabilities?

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  15. The urge is to do something to get us out of the doldrums. The question isn't one of getting more, rather it's a question of keeping what we have and slowing the pace of decline. Employees, to point to one example, aren't getting better health plans, as each year goes by, they are getting a little less, and that mostly happens without any complaint. For most Americans, and for practically all young Americans, their jobs when they have them, are less secure than they were a decade ago, and this decline in security will continue in the foreseeable future.

    --Hiram

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  16. You are absolutely correct. The standard of living in the USA has been far above that of people in the rest of the world for decades. And it is still far above most.

    We have relatively big houses, cool vehicles, safe water, incredible healthcare, etc, etc, etc. Now the rest of the world is recovering from WWII and other political limitations and those citizens are ready to compete for what we have.

    On top of that our citizens are fine with sending their American wealth to these other countries in order to save money or get a product/service they value more. This of course means that wealth is not going to their fellow citizens or the tax coffers.

    Then on top of that we instituted the war on poverty which reduced the negative consequences incurred on irresponsible citizens making poor decisions. And since our society is paying those consequences, it made the cost of doing business in America increase.

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  17. As for healthcare costs: our society is full of people with unhealthy lifestyles and we insist on saving everyone no matter the cost... Of course our healthcare costs are going up.

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  18. since you brought up unhealthy lifestyles I am going to mention my latest health kick which is standing. I have a large box on the unused end of my kitchen table turning it into a standing desk. I am now standing nearly all of the time I spend surfing the web and reading (a few hours a day.) I am back to walking the treadmill for half the time I spend watching TV (not much in the summer.) If this experiment continues to go well I am going to get myself a standing desk when I return to work in Sept.

    juststand.org

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  19. As for healthcare costs: our society is full of people with unhealthy lifestyles and we insist on saving everyone no matter the cost

    One solution to the growing cost of health care is to reduce the amount of health care we provide. If more people died younger, it would save us all a lot of money.

    --Hiram

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  20. Laurie, Good for you. Keep it up.

    Hiram, That is very rational and somewhat like one of the ideas we discussed before...

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  21. And though employers have pretty nothing to do with the ever increasing cost of American Healthcare. It seems you want them to absorb the costs...

    "Employees, to point to one example, aren't getting better health plans, as each year goes by, they are getting a little less, and that mostly happens without any complaint."

    I guess your comment goes with the title of this post... "Blaming the Employers... Again..."

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  22. So here is the list from the link.

    •Unhealthy Americans abound
    •Americans want to save everyone
    •Saving everyone weakens Americans
    •Americans insist everyone MUST stay alive Link2
    •Americans love lawsuits
    •Americans and Doctors love expensive tests
    •American Government bureaucracy
    •Private insurance bureaucracy, profits & wages
    •Pharmaceutical personnel, profits & wages
    •Medical device personnel, profits & wages
    •Healthcare bureaucracy, profits & wages
    •Excessive medical licensing requirements

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