4 U.S. governors on jobs: Not enough (qualified/skilled) workers

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Londo_Jowo

Lifer
Jan 31, 2010
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londojowo.hypermart.net
Southeast Texas, beaumont, port arthur, orange, bridge city,,,, make a lot less than other parts of Texas. Shipyards were paying $16 an hour back in the late 1970s. Today, various companies are barely paying more than that.

There is supposed to be another LNG plant built close to sabine pass. When that kicks off hopefully wages will go up in the area.

Companies that do pay good are construction and temp jobs.

Obviously you don't know anyone that works in the refineries or chemical plants in the area, they're paid very well and have great benefits. Many of the companies that service these plants pay their employees well and offer decent benefits too.
 

IGBT

Lifer
Jul 16, 2001
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in other words Not enough qualified / skilled workers that will work for un-skilled wages.
 

Belegost

Golden Member
Feb 20, 2001
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I think yall pretty much answered my question, yall are not willing to do hazardous or dangerous work in the heat, cold, rain,,,,,.

I work on a tugboat and get every other week off. I make right at $50k a year and work 6 months out of the year.

Yalls response is a reflection of what is wrong with our workforce. Not worth it, could make more somewhere else, underpaid,,,, every excuse you can think of not to do the work.
So it is more than a little disingenuous to discuss 80-100 hour weeks and 50K/year without an upfront mention of the large amount of downtime. That shifts the effective hourly wage to the 20-30 an hour range, which starts to be more reasonable compensation for the risk and demands given low experience.

That said, no regrets on front loading 7 years of hard work to get my degrees in engineering. Even accounting for working 45-50 hour weeks on my salary, it still returns over twice the hourly rate before bonuses and benefits.
 
Nov 8, 2012
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From my experience the computer field is fucked.

Places know they can hire cheap as shit from outside the US. So they make the job have insane qualifications with shit pay. Then bitch when no US workers take it. Then they can legally hire visas.

When i started in the 90's If you knew how to turn on a PC you were qualified for the intro jobs! lol A+? Even better!

Which is EXACTLY why I moved to consulting :D

We tell you what you want - then we go tell a bunch of smart people from India to put it in place based on our specifications.

That or they do the development work (or hire out to IT like IBM) and we simply give them the specifications, requirements, and config.
 
Nov 8, 2012
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This is seriously it.

Companies put way too much faith in silly paper certifications & degrees instead of simply hiring an eager employee who can learn the job after a few days of training.

Mmmm, I can't say that's true for my employer.

In fact, we have training requirements every year that we have to maintain a certain number of hours of training that the company constantly provides on a variety of topics.

but that's the nature of my job, you have to stay on-top of the latest innovations that companies are looking to implement.
 

elitejp

Golden Member
Jan 2, 2010
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What we have is tech companies pushing for more N1 visas so they can bring in more LOWER PAID tech workers -- that's what this is about. There are lots of trained American's but the companies want to bring in lower paid people to do the job. We have outsourcing but we also have insourcing where companies make use of illegals for low skilled workers and N1 visa for lower paid skilled workers. The tech companies complain and the governors carry there water.


Brian
I guess you dont know much about India or Asia and how hard they work in school and college, and then their job. Lets see how well americans test compared to them. Thats right, we are at the bottom of the list. They outscore us, outperform us and work harder than us. The ONLY thing I see that america still has going for it is that we as a whole still pursue inventing things. Give it a bit more time and Korea, Japan and India will hold that title as well.
Everyone everywhere starts at the bottom does crap work for crap pay. GET OVER IT! Put your time in, work hard and in time you will get your promotion. Its still more beneficial and always will be for a company to hire and keep good employees that are paid more than low skilled workers who slack off and cant get things done yet get paid less.
 

werepossum

Elite Member
Jul 10, 2006
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I guess you dont know much about India or Asia and how hard they work in school and college, and then their job. Lets see how well americans test compared to them. Thats right, we are at the bottom of the list. They outscore us, outperform us and work harder than us. The ONLY thing I see that america still has going for it is that we as a whole still pursue inventing things. Give it a bit more time and Korea, Japan and India will hold that title as well.
Everyone everywhere starts at the bottom does crap work for crap pay. GET OVER IT! Put your time in, work hard and in time you will get your promotion. Its still more beneficial and always will be for a company to hire and keep good employees that are paid more than low skilled workers who slack off and cant get things done yet get paid less.
Not necessarily. Why should your company reward your hard work with a promotion into a $100k job when they can fill that same position with an equally hard-working individual for $50k?

Capitalism is an awesome system. But if we compete on a level basis with the entire world, through unfettered immigration or visa programs or off-shoring, then wages must reflect the composite average, including desperately poor nations. That's how it works.
 

purbeast0

No Lifer
Sep 13, 2001
53,717
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From my experience the computer field is fucked.

Places know they can hire cheap as shit from outside the US. So they make the job have insane qualifications with shit pay. Then bitch when no US workers take it. Then they can legally hire visas.

When i started in the 90's If you knew how to turn on a PC you were qualified for the intro jobs! lol A+? Even better!

this is a major reason there is so much shitty software out there - they hire the cheapest people to get the task done, then wonder why it's bug ridden.

software engineers are a dime a dozen now a days, but finding good ones is like finding a needle in a haystack.