US Depleted of Skilled Workers

[Dillon]

Addendum: what's really ironic for me is that I originally considered going into the 'vocational tech' path, but was talked out of it by the counselor due to my high (1280 total-720 verbal, 590 math) SAT score and entered the local college, only to drop out after my first year due to financial and personal (frankly, lack of maturity) reasons.

To be honest, I *enjoy* working on things with my hands and do most of my non-specialist car repairs myself, and I thing I would have been better served if I'd told the counselor to fuck off and entered the auto mechanics or machinists courses available when I was in high school.

Of course, hindsight's 20/20 and in the end it's my responsibility alone, but I wish I'd told the counselor to fuck off back in 1984 and entered shop classes.

There's an innate assumption a lot of people make that only stupid people should work with their hands. I'm not going to say that working a skilled trade requires high intelligence, but I don't see any reason to assume that college graduates, unless they're science or engineering graduates are necessarily any smarter than tradesmen in general.

[Dillon]

Ghetto edit: That should be "invalid assumption" not innate.

[brianeyci]

In other words, oftentimes, vocational training has been given the short shrift and we're now paying the price for it in more ways than one.

I want to clarify that my thesis isn't that all rich and wealthy people rely on family wealth and not hard work. Obviously there's people like your friend who went the vocational path and made it.

It's that some of the most rich and most wealthy people in our society have this kind of education, and the most powerful. The most powerful man on the planet is a History major. Most powerful politicians have law degrees, which are an extension of liberal arts. Elite extension, but still an extension.

So a poor parent taking a cross section of the most powerful and rich and wealthy and successful men on the planet could ignore the hard working people who climb the ladder, who let's face it are in the minority compared to established wealth, and conclude this was the path to follow, totally ignoring that what works for the top 1% doesn't work for all the rest. They have a lot of things going for them that you or I or almost anybody doesn't, like the ability to buy a Ferarri and Armani every day.

[Big Orange]

Duck like trumpet noise:

August 25, 2005

Hegemony Lost

The American Economy is Destroying Itself
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

The historian who chronicles America's decline will lay the blame on free market ideology.

I say this as a believer in the market. My books and scholarly articles demonstrate the superiority of market systems over government allocative schemes. The problem arises when market economics ceases to be thoughtful and becomes ideological or a dogma.

A good example of the latter is a recent Heritage Foundation study that argues that global outsourcing is the best way to equip the US military with the best technology at least expense. The study brushes away concerns with the erosion of the American manufacturing, science, and engineering knowledge base by asserting that such concerns imply protectionism and that protectionism means the death of innovation.

Protectionism can be problematical for innovation, and the study is correct to point this out. Where the study fails is in ignoring that innovation does not take place in a vacuum. Innovation requires a material base and depends on a strong manufacturing, science and engineering foundation backed by R&D programs.

In an interview with Manufacturing & Technology News (August 8 ), the study's project leader, Jack Spencer, sees protectionism as the only threat to American innovation, which he otherwise takes for granted:

"Our belief is that subjected to the free market, the United States is still going to produce most things because our comparative advantages are innovation and new technology. If liberated from protectionism, we can compete and that is where we will always emerge as winners."

This belief is simply untrue. As this belief is the basis for the study, the study has done nothing but confirm a preordained belief.

The US has no God-given comparative advantage in innovation and new technology. We were leaders in these fields, because we were leaders in manufacturing.

We were leaders in manufacturing, because Europe and Japan destroyed themselves in wars, and the rest of the world destroyed themselves in various forms of socialism and cronyism.

America's hegemony in manufacturing, science and engineering was the product of historical circumstances. Moreover, it occurred despite American protectionism.

The historical circumstances have changed. The US gave away its scientific and engineering education and its agriculture. It did this partly for idealistic reasons and partly as cold war strategy.

Once socialism collapsed in Asia, US corporations began outsourcing abroad the manufacture of products for US markets. Success with offshore manufacturing has led to offshore outsourcing of research and development and now innovation itself.

As a recent report from the National Research Council recognizes, "product development and technical support follow manufacturing." One consequence for America is the loss of many manufacturing capabilities and "the increasing availability abroad of unique technologies not found in the United States."

This development is taking a huge toll on America's human resources in manufacturing skills, engineering and science. The first American victims were blue collar workers. Millions of them lost their jobs and experienced sharp declines in the quality of their lives. But as research, engineering, design, and innovation followed manufacturing abroad, now it is white collar workers in information technology and university graduates in engineering and physics who are being displaced.

American university enrollments in science and engineering are declining because there are no jobs for graduates. It is pointless to invest money, sweat and toil in an education that has no payoff. Markets do work. Markets are working to shrink the demand for, and supply of, American engineers and scientists.

The next impact is going to be on project manager jobs, practically the sole remaining source of career related employment for many engineers and technical people. Project management jobs require people experienced with the technology of the job. The loss of technical and engineering jobs empties the pipeline of people who have the experience to assume management positions. Far from being able to innovate, the US will even lack the human resources to manage technical and scientific projects.

Many uninformed people believe the problem is that America doesn't produce enough scientists and engineers. Manufacturing & Technology News reports that "a group of 15 US business organizations has launched a national campaign aimed at doubling within 10 years the number of bachelor's degrees in science, technology, engineering and mathematics."

What is the point of this when there is a huge supply of unemployed engineers and technical people who have been displaced by offshore outsourcing and by H-1b and L-1 work visas for foreigners? I know an American software engineer in his thirties whose job was outsourced. After searching fruitlessly for a job for four years, he took a job in Thailand writing software programs for $850 per month.

The anecdotal stories are legion. Yesterday, a friend reported to me that the service technician who repaired his garage door opener said his company was flooded with resumes from college graduates and engineers who cannot find work and are willing to take jobs installing garage doors.

US executives, with an eye to quarterly earnings and their bonuses, continue to spend considerable resources lobbying for increases in work visas that enable them to replace their American engineers, scientists, and technical people with lower cost foreigners. These executives lie through their teeth when they assert the lack of qualified Americans for the jobs. The fact of the matter is, the executives force their American employees to train their foreign replacements and then fire their American workers.

In a word, American capitalism is destroying itself by dismantling the ladders of upward mobility that have made large income inequalities acceptable. By rewarding themselves for destroying American jobs and manufacturing, engineering and scientific capabilities, US executives are sowing a whirlwind. American political stability will not survive the turning of an American university degree into a worthless sheet of paper. Libertarians and free market ideologues who rejoice in freedom should open their eyes to freedom's destruction.

Paul Craig Roberts has held a number of academic appointments and has contributed to numerous scholarly publications. He served as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. His graduate economics education was at the University of Virginia, the University of California at Berkeley, and Oxford University. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions. He can be reached at: paulcraigroberts@yahoo.com

Link

I know it is a rather old article, but it shows how companies are systematically moving employment away, in order to run business as cheaply and inefficiently as possible to cut corners and save short term costs spent on running manufacturing or administration in America as coherent units that provide stable employment. The same thing is happening in Britain, at perhaps a progressed rate, with light industries like Dyson and Cadbury-Schweppes removing most solid assets from the UK.

[Oni Koneko Damien]

Well, this does give a lot of encouragement to my current plan of getting a good education in a technical field and working from there. My initial rationale was that "Yeah, there are plenty of degrees that will become obsolete in time, but so long as there is a functioning society, it will need people who know how to maintain it". Now it's bolstered with, "Oh shit, we're short of people who know how to maintain things, with some education and patience I'm sitting on a gold-mine!"

My eventual hope is to get some novels published. But reasonably, becoming a skilled electrician, machinist, etc. will be far better at keeping a roof over my head, clothes on my back and food on my plate... plus the resources I need to devote to writing in my spare time, than hoping for a break in the rather risky writing industry.

[TC Pilot]

It doesn't even have to be a skilled or technical job, either. I made as much in a bloody part-time "maintenance" position (essentially groundskeeping) over the summer as the starting salary of the "general machinist" in the article.

[Darth Wong]

At the end of the day, no matter how bad the economy gets, people will still need certain things. They will still need toilet paper, and food to eat, and toilets that work. I suspect there could be mass carnage in the market sector which sells luxury items to lower and middle-class families, though. That sector is pretty much entirely sustained by easy credit right now.

[Mayabird]

There's a whole buttload of problems with the educational system and society in general for why this is all happening. Among the things that haven't been mentioned:

Shop classes are expensive. English classes are cheap. When budgets get tight, the expensive stuff gets the ax.

The whole educational system is way too skewed towards liberal artsy/business-y/soft, fuzzy, and not-highly-useful subjects anyway, because for people who get degrees in such things, there isn't much else to do. (With a degree in Chemistry, you can do lots of stuff. With a degree in history, you could work at a museum, write history books, or be a history teacher. That's about it.) They of course are going to push kids towards whatever their pet fancy is, and never even realize why Little Amy gives them the Stare of Incomprehension when they tell her that she should study English instead of science in college*. Granted, most people aren't Little Amy, and they are just going along with whatever people tell them or whatever they hear. This covers not just skilled labor but also science and math.

Similar reason why there are lots of stupid stories about how "Oh how horrible, science makes everything ugly and mean instead of us all being happy and one with nature like we would be if everyone studied art." People who seriously disagree usually have better things to do than write stories in response, like work at their job. Also why people think that knowing "great literature" is more important than understanding, say, evolution. People who believe that are the ones writing about it and making people read their writings about it, because the evolutionary biologists actually have to do stuff with their lives, like research.

And some of it just turns into societal inertia. The more that people think that human resource management is a legitimate field of study, the more that people will think that it's a good thing to do, and other people believing it reinforces the belief in others**. I had a guy at work the other day who was saying that he wanted to go to the local community college so he could get a better job. I asked him what he wanted to study. Real estate. The housing bubble just asploded and he wants to be a real estate agent. I tried to talk him out of it, tell him to become a mechanic, but I don't think he listened.


*Yeah, my high school English teacher told me that I should get a degree in English, because I'm really good at writing and like reading. I did give her the Stare of Incomprehension, and I don't think she ever understood why.

**My mama told me she'd disown me if I majored in HR management. She likes her current job, partly because her company doesn't have HR.

[Uraniun235]

(With a degree in Chemistry, you can do lots of stuff. With a degree in history, you could work at a museum, write history books, or be a history teacher. That's about it.)

There's a very popular notion floating out there that it doesn't matter what you major in because "lots of people never really use their degree in their career anyway".

[Zablorg]

I heard something similar, that degrees simply get you tickets to its relevant job, and the things that you learn in the course are less applied.

[Darth Wong]

(With a degree in Chemistry, you can do lots of stuff. With a degree in history, you could work at a museum, write history books, or be a history teacher. That's about it.)

There's a very popular notion floating out there that it doesn't matter what you major in because "lots of people never really use their degree in their career anyway".

There is some merit to that, particularly for degrees that have no direct application, or jobs which don't require specific technical knowledge. But even if one accepts that logic, the other value of a degree is that it shows discipline and the ability to deal with hard work and stress. The widespread proliferation of easy-to-obtain degrees ruins that.

One of the biggest problems I've always had with liberal-arts programs is that so many of them seem to cater to the student's happiness. Students pick courses because they're "interesting" or "engaging" or "fun". It seems almost more like some sort of summer camp than preparation for the real world.

And after all of that, it must be pointed out that the person with real technical skills has more options than the person without them. I've known engineers who became salesmen, managers, small businessmen, etc. My doctor is a former electrical engineer who decided to become an MD. People who sucked at math and science and never tried to rectify this problem have far fewer options; an engineer can become a salesman if he wants, but a salesman will have a helluva time becoming an engineer. It's foolishness to restrict one's choices so early in life.

[PeZook]

The problem arises when market economics ceases to be thoughtful and becomes ideological or a dogma.

You know, this sums it all up. Really,really fucking well.

Did you know socialism worked in the USSR? The standard of living it got for Russians, the infrastructure it built, the industry it created...it was all done under a centrally commanded economy. They did it all, thanks to good management, plenty of ruthlesness and a lot of thought. Then they pissed it all away.

Centrally commanded economies are,of course, inefficient, heavy on bureaucracy and slow to respond to change. But what really murdered USSR's success was the quasi-religious nature of their ideology. They had space launches accelerated in order to commemorate Lenin's birthday for fuck's sake!

The US managed to avoid most of that, and now is tumbling down the same path: when your economic policy is a matter of ideology and worldview, rather than study and consideration, you're fucked.

[Sarevok]

Did you know socialism worked in the USSR? The standard of living it got for Russians, the infrastructure it built, the industry it created...it was all done under a centrally commanded economy. They did it all, thanks to good management, plenty of ruthlesness and a lot of thought. Then they pissed it all away.

Soviets got blamed for quality of their consumer goods right ? Well their cars and TVs were not good to look at but they fucking worked ! Many of the appliances my dad brought back from USSR still work. We even had Niva car once and it was built like a armoured car compared to Toyotas. I loved their approach to household goods - they went for functionality over looks.

My father did not mention any brutal stuff that characterizes the Soviet Union. The USSR really sounded like a nice place to live and sometimes I wish he had not returned when the Union collapsed. His opinion maybe colored so I am wondering was the USSR really a good place to live in 1970s and 80s ? Or was a there hidden bad side to life of average people there ?

[PeZook]

Soviets got blamed for quality of their consumer goods right ? Well their cars and TVs were not good to look at but they fucking worked ! Many of the appliances my dad brought back from USSR still work. We even had Niva car once and it was built like a armoured car compared to Toyotas. I loved their approach to household goods - they went for functionality over looks.

To be fair,American consumer electronics from the same era were far, far superior to Soviet ones, but that's not what counts. What counts is that Soviet citizens had acces to cars and radios and indoor plumbing and public health care at all. They had an dirt-poor agrarian country in 1917, and by the 1960s they were competing with the US in the space race (not very well, but nobody else even had the capability!)

But even at that time their system was accumulating rot, and it fell over.

My father did not mention any brutal stuff that characterizes the Soviet Union. The USSR really sounded like a nice place to live and sometimes I wish he had not returned when the Union collapsed. His opinion maybe colored so I am wondering was the USSR really a good place to live in 1970s and 80s ? Or was a there hidden bad side to life of average people there ?

Well, it had a relatively good living standard compared to most of the world. However, there was the authoritarian government, the periodic shortages of basic goods, political crimes and such. Also, by the 1980s, the soviet economy was really starting to feel the pressure of its own inefficiencies and inertia.

Still, a few key decisions may have saved the country and reformed its economy, but it's a common failure of centrally-planned regimes - they rarely get lucky enough to get the right people in the right positions twice.

I actually lived (was born, actually) in another socialist country through the 1980s and 1990s. Stas Bush can probably tell you a lot more about life in the USSR, and you can look for threads about that (there were a couple).

[Xisiqomelir]

How the fuck does that justify the middle-management bloat that characterizes far too many industries in decline, and which is largely driven by this "put everyone through liberal-arts or B-school" idiocy? How about all of these imbeciles who think that you don't need to know any particular industry's technical nature or inner workings, as long as you know "business"? I've personally seen several businesses driven into the ground by that B-school bullshit.

See, stuff like that is why I'm minoring in computer science while getting a buisness degree. There are too many people at the top of corporations these days that have no damn idea how the lower levels work, and thus cannot properly manage them. I plan to eventually get some sort of management job at an IT company, but I also damn well intend to have enough programming know-how to make it as a low-level employee just in case I can't, and (Zeus willing) if I get a management job, i'll have some idea as to what the programming process is like, so I won't end up placing rediculous demands on the employees because I have no damn idea what their jobs are like.

This could work out for you pretty well. I'm employed via my tech management minor exclusively atm, while I try to decide on whether I should go to graduate school for my major (Physics) or just sell out and get the MBA.

[Sam Or I]

There is also a sense of entitlement in my generation. (Not everyone, but I get an overall sense of it.) After students graduate college and or a trade school, they think they should earn X amount. I have heard so many times that that people would not take a job because it did not pay enough. (Although not working usually pays less, unless you have kids which is off topic.)


Unfortunately blue collar work is now looked down upon. Rarely people say I want to be a machinist/construction worker/plumber when I grow up.

[Julhelm]

It's somewhat insulting to think that people would look down on learning a definite skill and being able to actually create something that lasts in favor of wearing a suit and shuffling papers between bin A and bin B.

[Kodiak]

There is a definite need in the world economy for paper-pushers and bean-counters. Society floats on a sea of paper, and we need paper-pushers to make sure the machine of commerce runs smoothly. Be that as it may, however, I have noticed a huge decline in the amount of tangible skills being taught compared to how much in demand they are in the technical industry.

I graduated with a BS in Mechanical Engineering last May, and when I went to interview for a job I was asked a handful of questions on basic physics. What they really wanted to know was: Had I ever turned a lathe before? Did I know how to take things apart and put them back together? Could I read a part drawing and build a model? Did I understand how textbook equations measured up to real-world application? They required their engineers (mechanical, at least) to have hands on experience. Fortunately I'd taken several manufacturing classes and had several college projects under my belt so I could give them the answers they want.

I've found since working here that most tech industry HATES shipping manufacturing over seas because 1. they can't control it as well and 2. they don't have confidence in it. If tomorrow 10,000 people applied for manufacturing jobs in the Silicon Valley, they'd be employed within 6 months because there is that much demand. If the world continues to place importance on the intangible skills and professions of HR and paper-pushing, it will soon find out it's invested in nothing at all

[Darth Wong]

Also, people want to have support. Outsource something overseas, and if you need post-sale support with it, good luck.

[brianeyci]

Ultimately however, training more engineers won't solve the problem of skilled workers. Aerius mentioned that engineers are more useful than bean counters and I agree with that sentiment -- however, in other threads in the forum it's stated the engineering "shortage" is entirely manufactured by corporations who want to hire foreign workers. It may very well be there's only so many engineering jobs, and too many engineers.

A recent graduate confirmed to me in the summer what the engineering market is like for new graduates -- nearly impossible unless you have co-op experience or hands-on experience (like Kodiak), because they're all looking for 10+ years experience (like Broomstick mentioned.) Engineers should be managers or in critical situations. If engineers are coming out and turning lathes because business people are taking all the management positions, then there is a problem. You didn't need an engineering degree to turn a lathe in the 80's.

Unfortunately I see only two practical solutions. Offer BA in high school (not such a bad idea) so people won't waste years of their lives and universities don't have a monopoly on bullshit, or go with a campaign to degrade the meaning of higher education, which is an utter shame and should only be done as a last resort. Failing many students is politically unacceptable at the high school level, and honestly that is where the problem needs to be fixed.

[Darth Wong]

A recent graduate confirmed to me in the summer what the engineering market is like for new graduates -- nearly impossible unless you have co-op experience or hands-on experience (like Kodiak), because they're all looking for 10+ years experience (like Broomstick mentioned.) Engineers should be managers or in critical situations. If engineers are coming out and turning lathes because business people are taking all the management positions, then there is a problem. You didn't need an engineering degree to turn a lathe in the 80's.

Don't be stupid. They don't want engineers to actually operate lathes. They want them to know how to operate a lathe, so that the floor technicians can't bullshit them about how long it will take to do something. But yes, we do need a lot more skilled tradesmen. Unfortunately, skilled trades in this society tend to come from the redneck class: if you hang around tradesmen, prepare to breathe a lot of second-hand cigarette smoke. That's one of the reasons that a lot of people don't want to go into the trades. In other countries, the connection of "skilled trade" and "rural hick" is not as pronounced as it is here.

[CaptainChewbacca]

This is why I'm glad I do environmental and geologic work. People will AWLAYS want to build/develop/improve/modify land, and to do that you need someone who can tell you whether or not the soil you're working on is safe, and whether or not the kids on the playground will go bald from toxic exposure.

[K. A. Pital]

His opinion maybe colored so I am wondering was the USSR really a good place to live in 1970s and 80s? Or was a there hidden bad side to life of average people there?

In terms of general life, it wasn't much different from now, minus the absence of Western consumer goods (all consumer goods were Soviet) and the absence of mass poverty and homelessness. Technically there's a "Soviet splinter" in the world, that is Belarus. You can travel there. It's much like the 80s USSR, plus the Western consumer goods.

In short, it was a country short of the First World, but quite ahead of the Third World - no abject poverty, guaranteed work, high caloric intakes with healthy diets, generally foods were fresh and healthcare wasn't in such disarray, so there was greater health and less illness. Periodical deficit of consumables was not ubquitous, but rather province- and time-specific (the lags and failures of central planning), as well as the legacy of the war which destroyed 1/3rd of industrial assets and killed 10% of the population in the XX century...

I also share the assessment of Soviet consumables - they were rigidly designed, long-lasting when not nice-looking. The basic underlining philosophy of Soviet industrial production was glorified fordism.

I'd recommend searching one of those "USSR life" threads, with photos: like here and like here

They had an dirt-poor agrarian country in 1917, and by the 1960s they were competing with the US in the space race (not very well, but nobody else even had the capability!)

What is also important, the system by 1960s brought the people's life expectancy on par with the United States. The industrialization, started with almost a 100-years handicap (the US was more urbanized, industrialized and had better developed education and healthcare, which manifested in their ALO of 50 years as early as the 1900s), was successfully finished.

[Broomstick]

Don't be stupid. They don't want engineers to actually operate lathes. They want them to know how to operate a lathe, so that the floor technicians can't bullshit them about how long it will take to do something.

According my husband-the-former-engineer, it is also so the engineers designing something don't ask the guys "cranking handles" (as he put it) to either do something impossible to do with the tools at hand, unreasonable to do with the tools at hand, or ridiculously expensive with the tools at hand.

Personally, I don't think anyone should be permitted to hold a management position without first spending six months scrubbing toilets and six months in a mailroom or something on par with that. Too many managers feel they are too good to get their hands dirty, or that they don't need to have some notion of how things actually get done. No, you don't hire a manager to send faxes, answer the phone, or make copies but they need to have some notion of how these things occur.

(ESPECIALLY answering the phone, my god, some of the awful things I've heard over phones...!)

[NeoGoomba]

Unfortunately, skilled trades in this society tend to come from the redneck class: if you hang around tradesmen, prepare to breathe a lot of second-hand cigarette smoke. That's one of the reasons that a lot of people don't want to go into the trades. In other countries, the connection of "skilled trade" and "rural hick" is not as pronounced as it is here.

That was the main thing I noticed when I was in school. It was like a self-feeding mechanism. The few hillbilly kids would go to VoTech, then the snobby kids and their parents (of which were the bulk of my school) thus stigmatized it so that no one else would even consider it viable path to a future career, since only the "dirtbags" would go to it as a percieved last resort.

And so year in, year out, it was the same kinds of kids getting certified, and the same kids thinking that majoring in Latin would be their salvation come career time.