Cross posted at Finding Ponies…
The last few months of unemployment statistics have been dismal – every economic update on it is ‘unexpectedly bad’. It’s true that people are unable to find jobs like they used to have…but a couple data points and personal anecdotes have me wondering if other dynamics are at work
Today’s “Real Clear Markets” included a blog entry from “Blackhawk Blogs” by Ziad K Abdelnourwho said:
A great number of the richest among us never finished high school, and many who went to college never managed to graduate. …..
The entrepreneurial knowledge that is the crux of wealth creation has little to do with glamorous work, or with the certified expertise of advanced degrees. Great wealth usually comes from doing what other people consider insufferably boring.
The treacherous intricacies of building codes or garbage routes or software languages or groceries, the mechanics of butchering sheep and pigs or frying and freezing potatoes, the murky lore of petroleum leases or housing deeds, the ways and means of pushing pizzas or insurance policies or hawking hosiery or pet supplies or scrounging for pennies in fast-food unit sales, all of those tasks are deemed tedious and trivial.
This is interesting to me, because while I was in highschool I was a cook in a restaurant. That convinced me to get an engineering degree because music/art would NOT be a certain path to avoiding future restaurant work 
As a result of that choice – to go for a harder more rigorous degree/career:
- I opted for a part time job as a highschool intern at Kodak in the afternoons in a work-study program – giving up a starring role in the highschool musical and relinquishing a spot on the varsity cheerleading squad my senior year
- In college I worked in an every other semester co-op program allowing me to earn a great hourly wage while getting real world experience in engineering at top notch corporations – so I had to give up my spot in the university’s audition-only madrigal choir.
- While back at college during my ‘on semesters’ when I was taking classes, I chose part time jobs –sacrificing social activities, parties, football games and sororities.
Right after the Berlin Wall fell, I asked a Sabra (native born Israeli) what they thought of the recent Russian emigration wave to Israel. Their response: “we love it because like our parents who first settled here, those immigrants are willing to do any job where there is an opening – a PhD in physics will sweep streets for a butcher just to start out and have some work – unlike immigrants from the USA and Europe”
Recently I overheard someone saying they weren’t willing to take a specific kind of job at a specific pay level because “they didn’t go to college and get a degree just to do that kind of work for that pay.”
It makes me wonder how many of the unemployment statistics are related to a culture that has lost its appreciation for personal responsibility, for doing whatever it takes – including (Heaven forbid) having a little personal humility and incurring a temporary sacrifice from fun activities.
As Ziad states: “In short, our rich – America’s best entrepreneurs – perform work that most others spurn.”
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If it’s any consolation, I think the rotten economy has started to force a long-overdue adjustment in people’s attitude toward work.
Yeah, some people consider themselves too good or too educated for some jobs. Problem is, even those people have to eat, buy gasoline and pay rent. And they know it. Savings accounts are depleted, unemployment insurance eventually runs out, other government benefits are also exhausted (or unavailable in the first place) and those who think this way quickly find that these low-on-the-totem-pole jobs are all that’s available. The competition for the few prestigious openings is simply too keen. The other 90% of applicants have to go someplace else – occupationally speaking – and stay there at least until the economy improves.
We’re seeing this already happening with a “graying” of the workforce in minimum-wage and entry level jobs. Teenagers who would normally take these positions are having the hardest time of all finding work of any kind; the jobs they’d usually take are instead going to the people I just described above, the ones who have families to feed. (Teenagers, more often than not, just want money to spend on luxury items, or at best, on higher education.)
It’s been a positive development for employers. The entitlement-minded are being whipped into shape, and the result is a motivated worker who shows up on time, takes instructions, and does the job without the complaints and attitudes present in many (not all) teenagers.
That does seem to give a little credence to the saying about “doing jobs Americans won’t do”.
well, the first thought I had was about an Andy Grove article recently published and why exactly it is that so many companies are outsourcing. The best thing parents can do to make their kids competitive for a shrinking jobs market here is to help them understand the value of work (because it’s getting paid) instead of waiting for their dream job to come along and refusing any entry level job that isn’t an instant partnership. That’s not how the PRC students operate….see http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-07-01/how-to-make-an-american-job-before-it-s-too-late-andy-grove.html
First, a half-second of playing Devil’s Advocate: I’ve had people ask me if I would take a temp position (e.g. receptionist) and be willing to do it as a permanent career. Yes, I’ve told those people to screw off, because what I’ll do to pay the bills while I search for a job that uses at least one of my two professional degrees is not necessarily the job that I’ll do for the rest of my life.
That nonsense aside, it’s downright comical how many people refuse to do work… and how this whole “Illegal aliens do the jobs that Americans won’t do” garbage got started.