Who’s Gonna Fix my AC?
Johnny-on-the-Spot … by John Foster …
I’m sitting in my air conditioned home office working on this week’s blog.
That’s on the heels of watching the guy fix my garage door and then picking up my truck at the dealership after it was serviced.
Several weeks ago, we lost power for 18 hours due to a storm and it got a little “toasty” in the palatial Foster estate.
But those power crews got everything fixed before all the food stuffs in the refrigerator thawed.
It got me to thinking about the skilled labor in this country.
For the last several decades, we’ve been on a push to send students to college to get degrees.
But what does that Liberal Arts major do when the lights go out?
A call is made to to the power company and a truck with a few skilled laborers is dispatched and power gets restored.
But what happened if that same Liberal Arts major calls the power company and gets a recording saying, “We’re out of business. There’s no one available to do the work”.
It could never happen, right?
Well…
In 1940, our country had 42 workers for every retiree.
Today, there’s 3 workers for every retiree.
By 2050, we’ll have just two workers for every person retiring.
The Baby Boomers are partly to blame because they flooded the work force “back in the day” but now they want to hang it up.
They’re retiring faster than they’re being replaced.
The NCCER (National Center for Construction, Education and Research) predicts 41% of today’s workforce will retire in the next 6 years.
The mission of NCCER is “to provide rigorous and relevant work force development solutions that create opportunities to individual career advancement and support industry growth.”
There are 11,200 people retiring every day.
Now the Bureau of Labor statistics says there are currently 7.8 million job openings in America.
The Chamber of Commerce says job openings are closer to 8.5 million people and we have 6.5 million unemployed workers.
If they all took one of those jobs, we’d still have about 2 million positions to be filled.
I saw another report that says there are 24 million “able-bodied adults” in America not working with 21 million of them not actively seeking work.
Seven point two million American men between the ages of 25 and 54 are not working or actively looking for work.
How do we connected those folks with either the Department of Labor or the Chamber of Commerce?
Seems as though we could lower the job opening numbers significantly.
Everyone talks about AI and how it’s going to put everyone out of work.
I didn’t see AI fixing my garage door, working on my truck or turning my power back on.
But those jobs require a different set of skills.
Skills that many feel are “too much like work”.
Have we lost our spirit and desire to work for a living?
Mike Rowe of “Dirty Jobs” fame has been talking loudly for years about the growing labor crisis.
Rowe states many of the best career opportunities today require a “skill” and not a “diploma”.
He says American is entering the “golden age” of plumbing, steam-fitting, pipe-fitting, welding and HVAC job opportunities.
Years ago, Rowe sent a letter to President Obama at the start of his 1st term, offering tp help promote his campaign promise of 3 million “shovel-ready” jobs for American.
Rowe suggested it might be a tough sell, given the country’s relationship to the shovel and related work.
The blue-collar champion suggested a declining work ethic problem as younger generation “snowflakes” face fewer consequences.
“Snowflakes” is a “derogatory slang term for someone implying they may have an inflated sense of entitlement, or are overly emotional, easily offended and unable to deal with opposing opinions.”
A number of businesses and industries have stepped up with special training options and scholarships to lure folks into the labor trades.
We “baby boomers” probably seeded the clouds for today’s “snowflakes” with the Dobie Gillis Show.
Remember Bob Denver as Maynard G. Krebs”
Anytime someone suggested he get a job, he’d screech, “Work?!?!”
Well, Maynard, we’re gonna need some workers.