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Rural America is facing an existential crisis. As cities continue to grow and prosper, small towns are shrinking. That fundamental divide played itself out in the recent presidential election.
[...] The trend is clear: Rural America is literally fading away. It shouldn't come as a surprise, therefore, that the opioid overdose epidemic has hit rural states, like Kentucky and West Virginia, especially hard. And the latest research from the CDC also shouldn't come as a surprise: Suicides in rural America (labeled as non-core) have increased over 40% in 16 years.
From 1999 to 2015, suicide rates increased everywhere in America. On average, across the U.S., suicides increased from 12.2 per 100,000 to 15.7 per 100,0001, an increase of just under 30%. However, in rural America, the suicide rate surged over 40%2, from just over 15 per 100,000 to roughly 22 per 100,000. Similarly, the suicide rate in micropolitan areas (defined as having a population between 10,000-49,999) went from 14 per 100,000 to 19 per 100,000, an increase of around 35%.
On the flip side, major cities saw much smaller increases in suicide rates, on the order of 10%. The graph depicts a clear pattern: Suicide rates are highest in the most rural parts of the country, and they slowly decrease as urbanization increases. As of 2015, the suicide rate in rural areas (22 per 100,000) is about 40% higher than in the nation as a whole (15.7 per 100,000) and 83% higher than in large cities (12 per 100,000).
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 30 2017, @03:58PM (12 children)
> The current failure is in preparing children to be self-supporting in life not in there being no jobs.
Proof by vague assertion! In what way are children not being prepared to be "self-supporting?"
And what jobs are available in rural america?
Manufacturing employment is down 30% since NAFTA passed (while manufacturing output is up 70% and is at the highest it has ever been).
So what jobs are you talking about?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday March 30 2017, @04:03PM (11 children)
Skilled labor jobs exist everywhere. I'm making this statement from rural America, in fact. There are over five million jobs unfilled at this moment because nobody can be found willing and able to do them. Make of that what you will.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 30 2017, @04:16PM (1 child)
> Skilled labor jobs exist everywhere.
That's a facile and meaningless statement.
Yes they exist. What matters is how many of them exist and how well they pay.
The number of good paying jobs has plummeted as automation has replaced people.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday March 30 2017, @05:15PM
There's also the question in how in a rural setting one gets a education mindset from parents, access to learning facilities in expensive cities and all payed by bankbarons.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday March 30 2017, @05:13PM (1 child)
And skilled labor doesn't exist everywhere, thus pays reflects that (lest H1-B).
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday March 30 2017, @05:53PM
Skilled labor not existing somewhere is an education failing not a jobs failing though.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 5, Informative) by n1 on Thursday March 30 2017, @05:15PM (3 children)
Don't know about the US, but in the UK there were/are lots of job vacancies listed... Some of course are real, but many others fall into these categories:
1) Recruitment agencies or companies creating fake jobs to scope the market and build profiles for a time when they do need to hire someone, and to gauge the market to see how much they can lowball a salary and still get suitable applicants.
2) Self-employed contract work where the employees must pay for entry (uniform, equipment, vehicle) and essentially get a franchise and an area to generate their own leads/work under another brand.
3) zero-hour (or now one hour) contracts where people just get put on the books and maybe get a call 6 hours before they need to be at work, that they need to come in or get blacklisted. Usually ending up with 30hrs a month, no guarantees on the employers side for any.
4) Jobs designed not to be filled to they can outsourced.
5) Contract jobs that are always listed due to the high turnover of recruits, as the sales pitch is good, but targets are unattainable so the pay you were expecting is never realized no matter how many hours you put in, so the employers only ever expect people to last a month working for almost free, then just get a new batch of desperate people.
I have personal experience of situations:
1) Got an interview because i was vastly overqualified and willing to work for cheap, was still expected to work for 2 weeks unpaid as a trial run.
2) Quit before i started, when i worked out the scam
3) many people i know have experience of this
4) is a hard one to prove (10 years experience in 5 year old tech)
5) was an example i got a call months after i applied, and then quit a month in after learning the business model... was assured by the line manager "not to worry, we have a new lot starting this week"
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday March 30 2017, @05:52PM
Interesting but I've never seen or heard of it in the US. Overselling the job, sure, but not near to that extent.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Thursday March 30 2017, @06:32PM
You missed one:
6) Posting several different jobs with similar, but distinct qualifications. It is a combination of 5 and 4.
If you apply for the wrong one (ie: the one you feel most qualified for), you are not qualified for the position they really want to fill.
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Friday March 31 2017, @07:52AM
The UK seems to have a particular thing for "temps", i.e., companies hiring staff without benefits. I know entire companies where the only permanent employees are management - everyone else is a temp, meaning that staff turnover is constant. Everyone is new, everyone is frantically learning on the job. Whoever you deal with has no idea how things were handled last year, and makes all the same beginner mistakes as the last person, and the person before that.
It seems a horribly inefficient way to run a company, just to avoid paying benefits.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 30 2017, @05:28PM
What jobs exist doesn't matter. You still need to get hired. Way too many companies disqualify people for the slightest reasons. Once you end up in that downward spiral... Applying to jobs is a full time job leaving you with no time or money to spend on new skills to increase your employability. The longer you're unemployed, the worse that gets as money gets tighter and employees don't want to hire someone out of work for long periods of time. It's extremely difficult to get out of that downward spiral. I was in it, I managed to use my unemployment benefits to get back into school and now instead of living on the street I have a Masters degree and am about to buy my first house. I'll employ many others in fixing it up to livable conditions. A bottom social security net is very helpful. I would had been an excellent criminal without it. Instead, now I'm an excellent engineer and in 1-2 years will be starting my own business.
(Score: 3, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Thursday March 30 2017, @06:24PM
There are over five million jobs unfilled at this moment because nobody can be found willing and able to do them.
I've seen you say this before. I'm curious about your source for this info, because honestly I'd like to read more about it.
I completely agree with you that we need to encourage more young people to learn trades, enter apprenticeships instead of college, etc. I have no doubt that many young people could find better employment opportunities in skilled trades. But I am also aware that employment markets can be manipulated and "shortages" can be exaggerated (e.g., employers unwilling to pay reasonable wages for qualified people, unions manipulating entry-level qualifications and apprenticeship opportunities, etc.), so I'm just looking for accurate figures.
Just as one data point, my dad was a skilled tradesman all his life, and a highly qualified one. For the last couple decades of his career, he worked at a non-union shop, mostly because it was closer to home and union opportunities were few in the area. Anyhow, what he saw in his final few years was: (1) his company outsourced more and more work, to the point that the tradesmen in his division of the company decreased by over 75% while he was there, (2) increasing automation also played a role in reducing necessary workforce, and (3) in his final years, his company decided that individual tradesmen weren't really as important, so it wanted to reclassify everyone as "multi-skilled workers." Thus, my dad, in his mid-late 50s, spent a year or so going to night school on and off, taking an 8-week course on basic electrician skills or basic mechanic skills or whatever, to supposedly "train" him to be a "multi-skilled worker."
He did this because the company promised salary increases for "multi-skilled workers" and because he saw previous cutbacks so this created a little more job security for him. He was jumping through the stupid hoops created by management, who clearly were idiots and thought that you could create somebody who could basically do ALL skilled trades just by giving them a few weeks training in each.
My point is that the neglect of skilled trades isn't only an education issue. They are often not appreciated anymore by society, by employers, etc. Unless you hit a particular demand in an area or get a good union job that guarantees high wages, etc., you may not be paid proportionately to the level of skill expected of skilled tradesmen. So it's part of a larger issue too.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 30 2017, @07:11PM
That's a load of bullshit and you know it. Here, let me correct it for you:
"There are over five million jobs unfilled at this moment because nobody can be found willing to do them at a sub-standard wage for the location of the job."
Of course you can't find someone willing to work for $9/hour in NYC. Of course you can't find someone willing to do a job that typically commands an $80,000 a year salary for just $25,000 a year. NO FUCKING SHIT, SHERLOCK.
In case anyone says [citation needed], here's my citation needed: The current H1B fiasco, something that, again, Trump promised to fix but I have a feeling that will be Yet Another Lie from the bullshitter in chief.