Right now during the pandemic, the most in demand workers are anybody in the building trades. Everybody is putting on additions or remodeling or building new houses, I guess because mortgage interest rates are so low. Maybe it's a one-time bonanza, but anybody who can wield a hammer or shovel is in demand right now.
If you had a quote for an addition or any kind of construction or landscaping work from before March, good luck. Prices have gone way up, and they pick and choose the most lucrative jobs. Some will be honest and tell you they have bigger or more profitable jobs and they are doing those instead, others will just ghost you. From: AF <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Adam Moffett Sent: Tuesday, October 13, 2020 9:11 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [AFMUG] OT good to be a boomer I went to community college in the 2000's. Got an associates in CIS. I still have no further education. The cost-benefit analysis told me there was no point in doing so. I lived in the same town with Cornell University, and people were coming out of there with 6 figures of debt and a bachelors degree in English Literature. No thanks. I would have been on this list or the earlier Part-15 mailing list with you old farts during that same time period, and I already had a decent job in communications before I even started school. The high school guidance counselors were telling literally everyone to go to college. "You'll make more money in the long run". "Statistics show it doesn't even matter what your degree is in, you'll still make more money than if you had no degree." I was only a friggin kid, but it was pretty obvious to me you'll eventually saturate the market with degrees and they'll become meaningless. Especially if you're telling people an arts degree is the same value as a science or engineering degree. You'll end up with a lot of arts degrees because frankly, science is harder. At college, the advisors would keep telling you to go ahead and take loans because you don't have to pay them until after you graduate, and by then you'll have a better job than the people with no degree. Again, clear bullshit. The advisors must have believed it, and a lot of young people trusted them. One financial assistance advisor described it to me as "It's like THEY'RE paying YOU to go to college." Uh-huh. Providing a loan is not paying me. I'm not as think as you dumb I am. But clearly a lot of people believed that crap. Maybe TV and movies play a part in this story too. Our works of fiction focus on the drama and interpersonal issues at workplaces, and not the fact that those people are spending all day doing something difficult or tedious in between their drama sessions. Maybe on some level people know that work happens at work, but on some other level they imagine they'll have lots of fun hijinks and a paycheck too. Doesn't help seeing those kids in "Friends" working menial jobs and living in a huge, well furnished Manhattan apartment. Uh no. Young working people in NYC live in Chinatown or Spanish Harlem, and in a space the size of a walk-in closet which they share with a roommate. Their furniture is bricks and milk crates. And yes, as someone pointed out, the growth in cost of tuition has dramatically outpaced all of cost of living, inflation, and wages. I don't know what drove those prices up. If you tell everyone to go to college that inflates demand I assume, but that can't be the whole picture. So I think the issue is was driven by counselors and advisors who were from a prior generation giving advice based on their time when college was cheaper. Maybe they never rechecked their math. Maybe they really believed the market will magically create more jobs for arts degrees. I suggest that the kid with a degree in engineering or science who can't get a job is just an idiot with a degree. He interviews poorly, or doesn't show up, or has a bad academic record. Meanwhile there's a smart and studious kid from India or Pakistan who will take that job on a work visa instead. Sorry charlie. Meanwhile a master mechanic or a journeyman linesman makes six figures with no student debt and no degree at all. Who was the real smart kid? Our electrical make-ready contractor accidentally emailed me his payroll report......I almost asked him for a job. Those Mo-fo's are rolling in cheddar. There's a shortage of them. Average age of linesmen is 50. They are aging out and have no replacements lined up because everybody has a friggin English degree and wants to have an easy job. On 10/11/2020 5:27 PM, Ken Hohhof wrote: Here's one I don't understand. Not pointing a finger, I genuinely don't understand. Student loan debt. Is that the huge issue that people say? And if so, is that a new phenomenon? Why? I assume my dad went to college on the GI Bill after WWII. I worked 20 hours a week all through college making pizzas and burgers, and had a coop job every third quarter or so until the coop jobs disappeared due to a recession. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recession_of_1969%E2%80%931970 Plus my parents helped out. I don't remember my friends in college talking about student debt, but maybe they had it and it just wasn't talked about. I can speculate some possible reasons for a student debt crisis now: - Tuition has gone up - Part time jobs and coop jobs unavailable or don't pay enough - Less financial assistance available - Predatory for-profit schools - Lots of kids who couldn't find jobs in the Great Recession went to school or pursued advanced degrees instead None of these seem like adequate explanations. College is too expensive, not sure how much it has gone up adjusted for inflation. You'd think with online instruction and extensive use of low paid adjunct professors they could keep costs down. Certainly dorms, food and other amenities are a lot fancier than when I was in college, maybe those costs have gotten out of hand. You'd also think state schools and especially community colleges would be affordable options, Harvard and Yale aren't the only places to get a good education. But if there's genuinely a huge student debt crisis, what is causing it, and how do we fix it? Is "free college for all" really the only solution? I understand with the pandemic, people out of work can't pay their student debts, but supposedly this problem predates the pandemic. From: AF <mailto:[email protected]> <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Bill Prince Sent: Sunday, October 11, 2020 3:54 PM To: [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> Subject: Re: [AFMUG] OT good to be a boomer Yah. Even though I'm a boomer, I think attributing the current state of the economy entirely on boomers is missing the mark somewhat. There are a whole raft of issues that are squeezing millenials like globalization and extreme automation. You keep adding barriers, and getting or creating a good paying job just gets more difficult. If all you can do is flip burgers at Micky D's or pour coffee at Starbucks, maybe you need to think a bit more creatively. bp <part15sbs{at}gmail{dot}com> On 10/11/2020 11:52 AM, Ken Hohhof wrote: Obviously I'm prejudiced, but I don't think this whole trope about all the problems young people today face being the fault of the baby boomers (and wishing they would die and stop hogging all the good jobs) is quite accurate. Yes we had a long recession starting in 2008 (but of course there were recessions back in the 1970's as well), but I saw a lot of parents dipping into their 401K savings and taking out loans on their paid-off houses so their adult children could live with them, or to pay for their kids to go to college instead of being unemployed. Baby boomer 401K plans were a big cushion for millennials and the economy in general during the "Great Recession". I think what will actually hit the millennials is when the boomers do die, they won't be inheriting as much money because those retirement funds got drained. Also, don't kid yourself that 70 year old boomer greeting people at Walmart or bagging groceries at Kroger is just continuing to work for the fun of it, or that a millennial wanted that job anyway. As far as the "good" jobs, age discrimination kicks in around age 50. I don't think Google and Facebook have a lot of boomers writing code. How many boomers does Elon Musk have designing Teslas and SpaceX rockets? Still a funny skit, but I run into millennials who totally blame all their woes on boomers screwing their generation over. And the "why don't they die already" viewpoint spills over into Covid discussions. Lots of anti-maskers say things like "if they don't feel safe going out, they are free to not go out". Or there aren't that many deaths if you ignore the old people who were going to die anyway. People at least didn't used to say stuff like that out loud. From: AF <mailto:[email protected]> <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Robert Sent: Sunday, October 11, 2020 12:25 PM To: [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> Subject: Re: [AFMUG] OT good to be a boomer very apropos... On 10/11/20 10:04 AM, [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> wrote: https://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/millennial-millions/3867395
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