Krugman: When a business owner complains about being unable to find workers, ask how much he pays.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/25/the-fake-skills-shortage/?smid=tw-NytimesKrugman&seid=autoKudos to Adam Davidson for some much-needed mythbusting about the supposed skills shortage holding the US economy back. Whenever you see some business person quoted complaining about how he or she can’t find workers with the necessary skills, ask what wage they’re offering. Almost always, it turns out that what said business person really wants is highly (and expensively) educated workers at a manual-labor wage. No wonder they come up short.
And this dovetails perfectly with one of the key arguments against the claim that much of our unemployment is “structural”, due to a mismatch between skills and labor demand. If that were true, you should see soaring wages for those workers who do have the right skills; in fact, with rare exceptions you don’t.
So what you really want to ask is why American businesses don’t feel that it’s worth their while to pay enough to attract the workers they say they need.
I couldn't have said it better myself.
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working in education, like a middle school Nurse....you get the best of both worlds 
Hey Knitter, how are you doing-better I hope. I think about you and love to catch your posts. Maybe I should rename myself the knittingnurse.
Custody's settled, the ex is in the process of divorcing the nurse he left me for (which is messing with the kids, but we're muddling through okay), and I have a great, though stressful, job. 
I love our school nurse. She rocks! We all love her and do what we can to help her feel a part of everything. She's across the hall from me now, which is great because I've already had to send kids to her quickly. I wish we had her more than three days a week.
a whole industry.
& R
on one of my interviews (position as an Assistant manager.) They offered me a salaried position(working about 50 hours per week.) The salary was what I had been making 17YEARS AGO!!!!
For a paralegal job as a person with a Doctor of Jurisprudence degree. That is your standard law degree. Took me five years, working at the courthouse and going to law school at night.
It's 90 semester hours of pure hell and about three times as hard as regular college!! And I had been a legal secretary and a court reporter! I know all about pleadings and trials.
If our society did not throw away educated people I would be training trial attorneys.
But of course not, throw away thousands of dollars of your own money on degrees that look pretty on the wall. I managed to finish grad school in the 80s, before everybody had to take out student loans.
If there isn't I hope someone posts it in the near future. Gotta get people back to work!
No one in the media will dare bring up that one will they?
One thing to keep in mind about "government jobs" is that a big percentage of government spending goes directly to private business, not to government employees. The government payroll has been shrinking as a % of GDP for a long time. This chart shows FEDERAL government employees, INCLUDING military, but excluding USPS, as a percentage of total US population. And note that even the military payroll has been shifting to the private sector. About half the people on the ground in Iraq were private contractors. I don't know for certain, but I am guessing that those brave drone pilots are mostly private contractors.
One I still take time off to do when season hits, one I quit because I was sick of it, and one the owner took back over because he was tired of all his money going to employees. After which he cut their pay and hours, they all quit, he lost all his contracts, and he went from taking in a huge profit without lifting a finger to losing his ass - sniveling all the while that people just don't want to work.
The rich don't hire gardeners anymore. Now they contract out to a landscaping company that charges $20-30 an hour per employee, pays the employee $10 an hour, and makes the employee use their own vehicle and equipment. And they have to buy their own gas. I wish to god that were a joke. Those are actual rates of a local company as well as their pay rate and policy. If you wanna see true horror stories about small businesses, ask anyone that's ever installed satellite TV or Internet about them. 
For every one small business owner having trouble hiring because of the bad economy, there is at least one that is a selfish asshole trying to take advantage of a bad economy(*cough*rightwingers*cough*). I know lots of people in both categories.
The number of people employed by small business is usually skewed by what's considered a small business. Koch Industries is a "small business": http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39317328/ns/politics/t/report-big-business-turns-small-tax-purposes/#.ULR-AKCfXix
I definitely agree with your solution in the last paragraph, though. I'd also add either raising the minimum wage or a guaranteed minimum income. If you really want to help small businesses, giving people more money to spend with them is probably one of the best ways to do it.
I am a machinist. I've been working at this trade for 35 years. I can set up and run manual and CNC machines. I can make a quality functioning part from a CAD file, mechanical drawing, pencil sketch on a napkin, or a verbal description of its intended function. In 2008 I was laid off from a job I'd held for 13 years. It took a while, but last year I landed a job with a pretty good company. I'm still earning more that $6.00 an hour less than I was in 2008. That's all anyone would pay.
Every time I hear some business owner say "I can't find anybody that wants to work" I'll automatically reply "what are you paying?". After they throw their silly lowball number out there I'll usually say " shit, I wouldn't work for that either!"
Then if they take the bait and pop out this jewel "I can't afford to pay any more than that, what am I supposed to do?!" I'll hit them with "get off your lazy ass and do it yourself then, nobody owes you a damn thing"
I've managed to tweak a few of them like that over the years, that last line always makes them madder than hell 