The next generation of the workforce

[tule peak timber]

Rampant cellphone addiction. The "box" is not real-world experience. 

[Dan_Shade]

The cell phone has taken away our ability to entertain ourselves. 

[Don P]

OG, that reminds me of working with my wife's Dad. During the war the boys hid during the daytime. Teachers sent their lessons around in batches. He took all the tests for his degree at the end of the war. At any rate, he was schooled in metric and ended up here. Watching him work a problem or listening to the muttering as his brain was working. He converted to metric, worked the problem and converted back, most of the time in his head. I could tell especially as they both grew old, language was the same way. I remember at one point saying I needed to grab the calculator, he scowled, "there's one on your shoulders".

[B.C.C. Lapp]

On the help wanted.
Some of those jobs don't pay much more than minimum wage. Any store or fast food around here maybe $14.
I have no idea who is paying people to stay home and make as much money as that. I want to get the same paycheck.  :D
But saying that, USPS is looking for someone to deliver the mail here in town. A government job with good benefits. Well really almost any town. FIL don't get mail sometimes because no one to deliver it!!!!
As I say, I don't want to work either.  ;D

An entry level unskilled job that pays $14 an hour ought to have young folks fighting over it.   But they don't.   Why would that be?   What ever it is got to change and that right quick.  
Funny thing, when i was a kid I wanted to work.   Split wood, make hay, weed, what ever I could get. I did all these things as a boy on my grandfathers  farm and made nothing. Just helped my family. Then when I was about 13 I started to work "out" meaning, off the farm, for pay.  And brother that motivated me like crazy. I could buy stuff.  I had a used pickup of my own by the day i got my drivers license. 
      Some kids today dont even get their drivers license when they could.  They dont want to drive.  
Amazing.
      Some time back a friend of my sons was complaining about his school loans. I told him get a second job and throw every dime at the loans.  He said nah, I'd still never get them paid. 
Huh, with that attitude he's right he probably wont. I've always wondered what he did do? What was his plan.   I bet he simply didnt have one.   But i also bet he owns the latest and best so called smart phone you can get.

[Old Greenhorn]

 :D I got a good laugh and a fond memory out of your post Don. My Pop used to say "Use your head for something besides a hat rack!". He only said that to (at) me once or twice because he was usually very mad by that point and used his (rarely heard) 'very angry voice'. I heard it mostly while he was driving behind an incompetent or talking about a politician, stuff like that.

[WV Sawmiller]

Ian,

  I have very mixed feelings on your post but thanks for posting. The comment about making change was intended to highlight the current generations inability to do even the most simple math. I had a clerk a week or so back who owed me something like $4.05 in change and she gave me the bills bit no 5 cent so I asked her "Where's my nickel?" She was flustered but opened the change drawer and got it out and said "Its only a nickel". I told "Yeah, but its my nickel." What kind of attitude is that?

  I will say sawing has given me a very good lesson in adding fractions in my head. I can't imagine any sawyer being successful if he has to add them on his phone or calculator.

  I agree with the fact too many of our generation have failed to keep up with technology and computers in general. I love computers for the time saving and have prepared spreadsheets to tally and compute my sales and service. I like it because I only did the task one time and I use it forever. Same as my cheat sheet on my mill for sawing different size boards. But if I get to the site and my battery in my computer is dead I know I can grab a pencil and do a tally and compute the BF, multiply by my sawing rate, add in blades and mileage then multiply the sales tax and give the customer his change on the fly. Lack of technology does not completely shut me down - it just slows the process a little but like my dad used to say "One monkey don't stop no show."

[Nebraska]

 Southside  mentioned  his veterinarian and help, we are so blessed and lucky to have a good stable staff. The senior Dr. retired last January we hired a new doctor she is turning out well.  I had planned (lightly ) on making it to church  and I was looking for my good pants, the phone has  rang twice, so now I have a feedlot animal that needs a postmortem exam, and Jane (my tractors doctor's dog) had a disagreement with her roommate and needs a few stitches. So I read through this thread waiting for  Jane to arrive.  I am thankful my job requires my hands and my brain to be there. Time to go.

[barbender]

 The inability to make change isn't what bothers me, it is, like others said, the inability to do basic math. 

 I get it that some skills will go away, just due to being obsolete. I've seen many people also getting very upset about younger folks not learning to write in cursive. Is it really that big of a deal? I don't know. Do we spend a lot of time training kids how to do cursive, when they won't even use it? Because they don't. 

 If I could generalize the younger generation, as to what I've observed about them. They lack "hunger". I'm sure every generation has lost a little of that hunger, as our economic prospects improved as a country. I didn't have the same hunger my Dad did. When I was 18 or so, I had landed a decent short term job flagging for a construction crew. I came down with a stomach bug and was going to call in sick. My Dad found out and he was ticked! "You don't call in sick for a good job, unless you want someone else to have it!" I got my butt out to the jobsite, diarrhea notwithstanding😬 My Dad went to work for a paving company when he was around 35, put in 25 years and never missed a day except when my baby sister was in the hospital. 

 By the time my Dad got me an opportunity to go to work for the paving company (a union job that was far and away the best opportunity in front of me at the time) he had convinced me to get hungry. It was me and one other guy, some of the old timers said I shoveled the other guy out of a job😂 I worked for that company for 17 years, got a good union pension and a good start in life. 

[Cedarman]

Humor is based on reality many times.
Guy comes in to work in the morning and the boss says, " You missed work yesterday, didn't you."
Young man answered, " No, not particularly."

[beenthere]

Make change pfft, I need you to do fractions while walking a wall, and wondering what was wrong with metric anyway  :D.

Our time has passed, it is theirs. My role is to cheer, pass along what I can and help them along this road. I've seen this conversation and read it over and over through time. Rest easy, they are growing up, no they will not be us, we are the kids our parents were so worried about.

Rightfully so  

Well said. 
 Leads me to recall the time I was 14 and working mile up the road on a dairy farm. Farmer was in a thrashing ring (group) of farmers that once a year used teams of horses to bring in the oat bundles from the shocks in the fields. Put me on a wagon with a team of horses that would rather have been running free in the pasture than harnessed up as a team with an inexperienced "driver" holding the reins. 
 The older farmers were having a good time watching this newbie kid try to load a stack of bundles on a flat deck wagon for the trip back to the barns where the threshing machine was located. Made it about half way when one front corner of the stacked bundles slid off, spooking the team of horses, and with me hanging on so I didn't fall off behind the horses too. 
Nowadays, apparently the younger kids are being faced with another decision.. do they really want to be a he or a she? That right there is a life changing decision. 

[Mooseherder]

I worked 41 years in the grocery business and was able to start there at 14.  It was a good thing because we were dirt poor.  Before that I had a paper route at age 10.  That paid 5 bucks per week.  A ten cent tip was a big deal. My friend Armand had an uncle that was a millwright at Blier's Mill and hired us to clean the debarker area on Saturdays.  We were 13 years old.  He let us run the machine on second shift after school putting dogears on cedar fence boards. The circle saw wasn't 20 feet from where we were.   A whole different Era.  I own the edger that was in that building now.

Nowadays you can hire a 14 year old but their scheduling is very limited.  A minute over is a serious violation that may include a 10,000 fine.  I don't remember all the rules but until they're 18 the scheduling and job role limits apply.  
They can't throw a cardboard box into the baler.  They can't open the box with a box cutter.  They can look at their cellphone while gathering carts in the parking lot because I saw that this week. :D
Some of the people I worked for would have a coronary watching them.

There was plenty of unproductive workers I worked with during 41 years that were of all ages.  There's lots of training that doesn't happen with 14 to 18 years old because regulations drive business decisions.   When they turn 18 it's too late to be cool if your bagging groceries.   Then they're off into the world.  The cell phone in hand with steering wheel in the other is all ages and as bad or worse than drunk driving.  It's pretty bad here.

[WV Sawmiller]

   My dad worked fulltime at a papermill in the pulp room department. He started a monument and chain link fence business on the side when I was 6 and my 2 brothers and I were his labor force. When he started IU was too small to do more than fetch tools and haul water. He started with very little equipment and I learned to lay a couple of 2X12's end to end and roll 1000+ lb granite slabs into place using short pieces of half inch pump pipe as tollers and crowbars and the drive shaft off an old Model A as a pusher bar. Eventually he build a rack on the pick up with an I-beam and a roller trolly so we could lift the stones with a chain fall and swing it closer into place. I learned to read a tape measure to center and align the stones and how to level them side to side and back to front. (Try leveling 4 oversized granite slabs so all are perfectly in line and perfectly level with each other some time.)

Before I was old enough to drive he'd send me out in charge with an older hired helper who could drive to finish a job. I'd have to plan the job with the materials and tools required to do the work and if necessary buy or rent other equipment as needed to do the work.

In the summers I worked at a plywood plant then the papermill and drove a school bus 150 miles a day as a college student one year to pay my way through college. At the plywood plant they'd hire a crew of 8-10 a week most of the summer. I was the only one from my group to finish the summer and even stayed on working weekends on clean up. Many times I'd have new helpers work a couple of hours then walk off and say "They can have those 2 hours" and never come back. Often the foreman would not even be there and would just leave a note for me to clean out the press pits - the most dangerous and nastiest job on the site because he knew I'd finish it without supervision.

When I graduated college I went in the USMC and told Dad "I never would have had to leave home if you'd just bought an automatic cement mixer and a set of power augers/hole diggers." He'd laugh and say "I never needed them while you 3 boys were around." He bought a lot more labor saving equipment but only after we'd left home.

 Most kids today aren't going to work that hard or in such conditions.

[Machinebuilder]

I've read this thread and agree with most of the comments.

One that I will make it

As a society we have failed our youth.

The comment "my kids aren't going to grow up like me", growing up like that taught you to work and earned what you have.
What I see now is kids from an early age have so much given to them they don't know how to work for something. If you really want of need then you work for it

I laugh about the trouble learning fractions and metric. What I see as the problem is the education system is isolated from real life. Math is just a theoretical problem to them, it's not how do I cut 25" into 5/4 boards. the only difference between metric and "standard" dimensions is how big the unit is. It's a lot easier to count by 10 than it is to count by 16.

One of the things I remember from my dad is a very long lesson about fulfilling commitments.
If you commit to something, from taking a job to paying a loan, you do whatever it takes.

[JD Guy]

Like others I have found agreement with most everything already discussed. It does trouble me that so much of todays youth just can't do simple math. It's not just a skill it's using your head for more than just keeping your ears separated for gosh sakes!

The lack of ambition is being encouraged I fear by our education system and parents (where there are even both still involved) that are not installing a work ethic in their children. Yes, the electronic devices also contribute to the problems.

I also grew up in a family with both parents that worked "unskilled labor" to support us but there was an expectation on us as kids to be productive. In my pre teens I was working at mowing lawns and doing odd jobs then later working for farmers during hay bailing season. In the fall working for the local vet on Saturday catching up pigs to hold for vaccinations and castration. This was after playing a football game or basketball game on Friday night. If I didn't work for some spending money I wouldn't have had any! Those farmers and the vet were good people to work for and fed us guys well, but they also expected that after explaining to you once the task and how to do it you shouldn't need to be told twice!

Now, all of that said my wife and I raised two boys and sent them to college, because we thought then it would give them more opportunities. Thankfully they both have the work ethic and basic knowledge and are very successful in life and have good families of their own. By the way, we always went to church as a family so there's that too.

One way to begin to turn this country around in my opinion is to begin with revamping our education system. Also to not encourage kids to get a worthless college degree but get them into a skill set or trade school.

[WV Sawmiller]

   I lay a lot of current work ethic problems on the education system and our liberal society. (I'm trying to keep out of the woodshed here.) Giving participation trophies instead of only recognizing the top performers dumbs down and disincentivizes our youth IMHO. Seeing others excel in some areas I feel encourages the rest to try harder or look for other areas that they can be competitive. Everybody can't be the fastest and strongest or smartest. 

    As a supervisor I always figured it was my job to put the right people where they could be the most productive and give them the training and materials and guidance they needed for the best results for all. Every clerk and warehouseman I had could probably do their daily job faster and better than I could but they did not know how their work interfaced overall in the long run. I could do their job but would have to drag out the manual and crawl through the steps. 

   Leadership skills have to vary with the individual and circumstances. Some employees will perform better with a kind word or attaboy while others require a quick and hard kick in the seat to get them moving and you had to learn those skills too. Too many HR departments are getting like the educational systems and don't want any employee to struggle or hear any criticism so bosses are scared to administer the discipline their employees need. Be fair but be firm. 

    My wife is a retired HS band director and she had Principals who were horrified when she'd put a kid out at a public performance to do a solo or such. The principal said "What if he/she had made a mistake in front of everybody?" My wife (and the kids) were proud to be able to stand out and show what they could do even though there was risk involved. The principals would have denied that kid the right to shine just so he/she did not have to take a risk. Risk brings rewards as well as failure and kids need to learn to accept and compensate for or correct both as needed.

[Ianab]

One way to begin to turn this country around in my opinion is to begin with revamping our education system. Also to not encourage kids to get a worthless college degree but get them into a skill set or trade scho

That's what the NZ education Standards is trying to achieve. Lara's High School still has "materials technology". It's the old metal and wood work, sewing and cooking. But it's been renamed and updated to suit the modern curriculum. Cooking is now "Food Science" etc. They have CAD workstations for the students to design projects with etc.  Other courses relate to building and farming, and credits on those courses count the same as the more "academic" ones. Next year the building course is expanding, larger group of students and building 2 complete houses. 

They still have Dux awards for the top academic students, but likewise a kid that leaves school at 17 to take up a local building or electrical apprenticeship gets a positive mention in the newsletter as well. 

Minimum wage jobs? Of course they have trouble filling them. Most applicants are only looking for a temporary gig to pay the bills until they can find something better. So there is a constant turnover. Sticking to that sort of job means you are never going to get ahead. If it barely pays the bills, where is the future? Working for Min wage while doing an apprenticeship is one thing. Once you qualify you can earn good money. When your "promotion path" assistant supervisor", and pay goes up .50c an hour... Meh.. 

[Mooseherder]

A lot changed in business when Walmart got serious and came to town.  If you were anyone selling anything you took notice and probably felt the pain.  It was a game changer.   Business on the low end and high end worked through it but if you were in the middle you felt the loss of business.  A lot closed.   I think that changed the way business school taught business. A lot of fat or perceived fat got cut to compete.  Training was affected.  Short term profits increased by not replacing people as they left.  The boss is happy. They're never replaced because expectations and goals set that have to be met from previous years performance. 
And HR has the biggest seat at the table protecting the people throwing monkey wrenches. :D  
If your stuck with a dud on your team that means some others wear a saddle carryjng the weight of the dud because the dud knows the system.  They get paid the exact same wage.  The guy carrying the saddle can do it easily a lot of the time but tires of it and moral declines.   And then everybody has to operate to the new norm.  Then Amazon changes the business in a bigger way.

[TroyC]

On the help wanted. Some of those jobs don't pay much more than minimum wage. Any store or fast food around here maybe $14. I have no idea who is paying people to stay home and make as much money as that. I want to get the same paycheck

Saw an article in the news a few days ago, seems a family of 4 with mom and dad unemployed, in 27 states, are eligible for 100K in benefits. Now, I'm not a genius, but did get a BS degree and taught high school for 33 years. I never made nowhere near that working, but in these days and times, why would I desire a real job where I have to show up and perform a task when I can stay at home, enjoy my family, and collect almost twice as much as I'd make going to work? My point is, there is less an incentive to work nowadays as there was in the past.

[thecfarm]

100k!!!!    

[Ljohnsaw]

I have one of each.  My daughter has had several jobs in her 31 years.  She would get just above minimum wage working for several years and then let go or left to a "better" job.  Currently working at a feed and tack store.  Great bosses, mostly good employees (a bit of turn over with new hires) but not a lot of responsibly and really not a career/retirement plan.  Math was never her strong suit but she closes the store most nights.

My son started Jr. College this year.  In high school, he would solve math problems in his head but would still be amazed that I could quickly figure out my MPG on the last fill up to within a few tenths of a mile in my head.  First 2 years at the JC is free if you maintain a C average and complete 12 or more units.  So no school debt getting his General Education credits out of the way.  Not overly motivated but did save up $8k working part time in about 6 or 7 months to pay his own way for learning abroad (Florence, Italy) starting in February.  After the 90 days of that, decided to spend another 2 months around GB, Ireland and Scotland.

[TroyC]

100k!!!!

https://thepostmillennial.com/obamacare-subsidies-plus-unemployment-payouts-ensure-beneficiaries-over-100000-in-blue-states-study

This was the article, I did not check it for authenticity or accuracy, and I hope it does not take us towards the restricted area.

[Southside]

Tech jobs have their place, but being the path for everyone, and not being able to function without it, is a serious problem.

No scanner, tablet, algorithm, or chip is going to grow a single kernel of corn, stitch up one wound, or build one foot of road. 

We very much need people who can accomplish tangible results, in the real world, in adverse and changing conditions, otherwise there won't be a society to need all the technology. 

[Wlmedley]

My son graduated high school not really knowing what he wanted to do so I talked him into going to local college for a couple years.Took courses in power plant technology and after graduating still no job offers.He was working at Krogers at night stocking groceries.My nieces husband was working as a trainer at local carpenters union and got him into the apprenticeship program.Apprenticeship lasts 4 years with pay scale going up each year until after 4 years reaching full pay.Worked out pretty good.He has been working pretty steady for several years,has learned a lot,made good money and has a union pension to look forward to.I don't think many people even know about apprenticeship programs but they are a good deal for young people.Many don't make it through mainly because drug testing is frequent but working with someone on drugs will get you hurt or killed.I'm extremely thankful I never had that problem with him.He now has a wife and son so working is no longer a option  :laugh:

[Mooseherder]

Seemed like the whole community worked harvests every year growing up.  School was closed for 2 or more weeks so the kids could help pick potatoes.  I think it was 50 cents a barrel the last time I picked them.  Each kid making a few hundred dollars was a big deal. Then moved on to rolling barrels, barrel and harvester truck jobs to the barn and also worked bagging them and loading on the semi.  My cousins in Connecticut were picking Tobacco for their money.   Every area has a commodity needing harvest.  They still close school but I doubt very many kids are working the harvest.  

[Ianab]

Tech jobs have their place, but being the path for everyone, and not being able to function without it, is a serious problem.

No scanner, tablet, algorithm, or chip is going to grow a single kernel of corn, stitch up one wound, or build one foot of road.

We very much need people who can accomplish tangible results, in the real world, in adverse and changing conditions, otherwise there won't be a society to need all the technology.

Try doing ANY of those jobs now without touching a computer?
I'm including the GPS and computer on the tractor that sets the fertiliser spreading, or that surveyed the road and measured the levels. The X-ray and medical records the Dr needs are on the computer... Heck even any modern high end sawmill is computerised to some extent.  A large commercial processor has more computers than the space shuttle.
Common complaint with the local Ag contractors is finding workers that can operate the modern tractors. They are more like a video game than the machines we used to use.
Apprenticeships are still a common thing here. The school system integrates into that with courses that count toward completing a trade apprenticeship.