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When states suffer a widespread loss of jobs, the damage extends to the next generation, where college attendance drops among the poorest students, says new research from Duke University. As a result, states marked by shuttered factories or dormant mines also show a widening gap in college attendance between rich and poor, the authors write.
In states that suffered a 7 percent job loss, college attendance by the poorest youth subsequently dropped by 20 percent, even when financial aid increased. The pattern also persisted across a wide range of states, despite variations in public college tuition rates.
Source: Duke University
Excellent. Maybe now we can get over this idea that our precious little progeny are too good for blue collar work and fill some of the six million jobs that nobody can be found to do.
[Editor's note: On my checking of the '6 million jobs' statement, I came across this article from September last year.]
[J]ob openings at 5.9 million in July set a new all-time record. Yet despite all the anxiety we hear about disappearing factory jobs, the number of unfilled manufacturing jobs in July was at the highest level in recent years. So why are they still open?
Factory work has evolved over the past 15 years or so as companies have invested in advanced machinery requiring new skill sets. Many workers who were laid off in recent decades – as technology, globalization and recession wiped out lower-skilled jobs – don't have the skills to do today's jobs.
[...] Gary Miller [...] started at Ohio-based Kyocera Precision Tools Inc. in 1989, it employed 550 production workers. Since then it has shed half of its workers; yet it now produces twice as much [...] Mr. Miller, who is now the company's director of training, struggles to find technicians with the electrical and mechanical skills needed to operate and maintain the complex machines. One electrical maintenance job went unfilled for over a year as he searched for someone with an associate's or bachelor's diploma in manufacturing engineering.
[...] The study found it takes an average of 94 days to recruit for highly-skilled roles such as scientist or engineer, and 70 days for skilled production workers.
Source: Value Walk
Additionally, there are apparently plenty of jobs in food service. Starting in March of 2010 and continuing through April of 2017, there have been 86 consecutive month of payroll gains for America's waiters and bartenders. Since 2014, 800,000 "food service and drinking places" jobs have been created, over the same period the number of manufacturing jobs created has been just 105,000.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Saturday June 17 2017, @11:01PM (1 child)
Thanks for those anecdotes. I'm many things- very hands-on tech, BSEE, done automation, do lots of wiring. I've seen brilliant work done by non-certified people. I've seen horrible work done by licensed, certified, "professionals", "experts", etc. (_all_ trades). As you know all too well, caring about your work, being a craftsman, etc., are very different from being good at taking courses, passing exams, getting certs, etc. I've done some machining work and learned about deburring, etc. People think I'm weird, odd, wasting time, etc., because I insist on deburring the ends of conduit (metal and PVC), remove casting flash / edges from fittings and boxes, etc. Turns out it's in the NEC. Those poor chaps expect people to care about doing a good job. Many times I've found chaffed and cut wires in conduit- and I'm not a full-time electrician!
And yes, wire can move quite a bit in conduit. As you know, the current creates a magnetic field, which results in forces and movement in the conductors. But it's OK if there are no sharp edges left behind...
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday June 19 2017, @12:21PM
The ratio of copper to steel thermal expansion is like one or two millionth per degree F which doesn't sound like much but you multiply that out and take a 200 foot run from winter time cold to being overloaded in the summer (lets say a swing of 200F from -40F in the winter to a hot summer day in the sun and overloaded a bit, depends on your climate LOL) that copper will end up about an inch longer. Hundreds times Hundreds times Tens suddenly you're talking about a pretty good chunk of millionths. Obviously you don't have to move a whole inch to make a big enough hole to short something out.
You can also destroy cat5 ethernet cable that way. I suppose with power over ethernet people will be setting cat-5 on fire soon enough, if not already.
I suppose it happens although I've never seen a licensed journeyman or higher union tradesman screw something up, it must be pretty rare. I've seen screwups involving them, I remember a data center / carrier hotel installation where a customer initially wanted 3-phase for some kind of power supply so they contracted with the electrican to wire it, then they decided they'll purchase a smaller storage system with 220-V residential-like power supply instead to save money or something, and the dude who hooked it up was like "huh, funny power connector... " and assumed he was getting 4-wire 220 like your home dryer or oven, two hots a neutral and a ground, after all from one wire to the other two was hot on his neon bulb "hot or not" meter so he's identified two hots and a neutral on his first guess, and there was a good ground because the two hots were hot WRT ground (although he didn't check the neutral LOL). I guess they needed a new power supply after that debacle. They tried to blame the electrician who luckily had a signed contract to install 3-phase. One would think the guy installing the hardware would have something fancier than a neon bulb indicator, like a voltmeter maybe, but ...