First off, complaining is one of your problems. Nothing gets solved complaining nor does it do you any good. If you want great talent, you pay for it. People still don't realize we're living in the greatest period for business and entrepreneurship. The reason you can't grow is due to your choices or lack of. I disagree that younger workers are not qualified. This younger generation has just as much creativity. It's a different time and as a business owner, you must adapt. You have to take action. What you're doing now isn't working, try something new. There's many ways to get your job offers out there. With the current opportunities at hand, $10 an hour doesn't excite many people. Learn how to leverage the tools you have at your disposal to reach new potential employees, such as social media or job boards. Good luck. http://www.teachingonlinebusiness.com
Whenever a business owner claims they can't "find the employees they need" I always add: "at the wage you're offering." By way of analogy, if I can't find a surgeon willing to perform open heart surgery on me for $500, that doesn't mean there's a heart surgeon shortage.
4
She complains that young people don't have good work habits or necessary skills…
Then why doesn't she hire older people, who often have lots of experience and (anectdotally) better work habits?
Oh, right—because she would actually have to PAY for that experience and skillset, and more than $10/hour. And nobody wants to have to pay for good workers, just endlessly whine about not 'finding' them.
18
There is no skills gap, only a gap of employers willing either to train workers or pay fair market prices for those who don’t need that. See http://worksnewage.blogspot.com/2012/07/employers-cant-blame-workforce.html .
10
If parents don't teach work ethic to their kids, then the parents need to be required to take parenting classes. The lack of work ethic can be seen quite clearly in the classroom -- students who don't complete their work, check their phones instead of listen and follow directions, students who simply don't care. Again, parents need to be strong parents.
3
That's because the American classroom is usually quite boring.
There's no time or place for actual engagement, or absorption, with subjects. Everything is severely watered down, predigested for lesson-plans. Somehow schools seem deliberately designed to dilute out everything wonderous and interesting about learning.
6
Employers have been saying the same thing for years: people lack good work habits, we can't find people with the skills we need, today's young people don't have a work ethic. I heard all of this almost 40 years ago when I graduated from college, ready, willing, and able to work. College was never meant to be vocational education. Now it is used as vocational education and that's unfortunate.
In the 70s and 80s pharmaceutical companies complained that they couldn't find qualified employees. Other science based industries made the same complaints. People who were genuinely interested majored in these subjects. Yet when we graduated the various industries underpaid us, didn't invest in us, and in many cases never even interviewed us because there were too many of us. The same complaints are being made again. But now they don't even bother to hire experienced employees. Instead they outsource the jobs or bring in people they can underpay. A few smaller companies do bring in people with special skills that Americans don't have but that's rare.
I spent roughly 20 years in research. That experience was more than any employer wanted to pay for. I switched fields to IT. Now I'm in the same situation: too much experience with the added problem of being 59. If employers want qualified people who have a work ethic they might try something novel: hire us if we have most of the skills and then train us. Oh, and don't forget to pay us.
17
"Ms. Quillen and the others said that companies couldn’t find workers qualified to fill advanced manufacturing jobs,"
Sorry but Krugman says structural unemployment is not the problem.
3
I grew up in Jackson County in the late sixties and early seventies. At the time, it was a prosperous blue collar city and members of my family worked at the Goodyear plant. I still have friends and family who live in Jackson, Michigan Center and Grass Lake. They stayed because of the community and the beauty of Michigan.
Jackson, now, it is a shell of its former glory.
Very pleased to see Ms. Quillen advocating for Jackson and speaking of how she plans to invest money from the new tax bill into her employees and company.
4
A shortage of skilled labor? What else could one expect after the Michigan GOP gutted public education. Michigan threw its lot in with charter schools. And it looks like a bad bet.
17
My one plea to Ms. Quillen and other small manufacturers is to create summer jobs for high schoolers. That is how you learn attendance, performance, and hope for the future.
I personally worked in a small factory and as a waitress at a donut shop when in high school. Please hire ten kids to sweep, shred, weed, just show up and work for eight weeks. Thank you.
30
Bottom line: GOP TAX CUTS will do more damage than help. Money into the top 1% will do nothing to help job skills needed. I have seen the lack of grit to learn, just dumb down to get grad numbers up. The GOP ED Dept is doing just that. For profit schools to fleece American students with worthless degrees. As a small business owner, I outright reject most because they can't perform the simplest tasks, math and business skill nonexistent. It a shame but fact.
I would buy a 100 robots and pay mightily for 10 high skilled mechanics that unproductive could care less for job humans
5
Your situation is deplorable! You are not alone! There must be many others in your situation, in your area, and elsewhere. If you start a blog, you can reach them. If you set up a Facebook page, you can reach therm. If you swarm the local, regional, and national press, you can reach them. If you sit around and complain, nothing will happen. Nothing is wrong with our young people. It's not the "grit to learn" that's missing, it's the "grit to teach and train" for today's job market. Brovo for posting here! I hope you get some useful proposals. Unfortunately, our government is broken, so we, the citizens, need to band together to get young people the skills that they need to compete in today's market, and to support businesses like yours.
5
In the absence of public transportation, we also need to enable our economically poorer young neighbors to get to community colleges. If we stop waiting for our politicians to solve this problem, and instead do it ourselves, we may actually get this done.
11
As a business owner, I appreciate articles such as this. Business owners want to attract and retain talented employees, and will pay to do so. With that said, I often come to the same conclusion as Ms. Quillen: finding hard-working, hands-on employees is not an easy task. We pay our best people up to $22/hour, but for the entry-level employee, finding people worthy of $10.50 an hour can be a challenge. Many people just don't have the work ethic necessary to succeed. Also common is an entitled attitude amongst some of our newer employees that somehow they deserve to get paid much more than their productivity is currently worth, and a basic sense that they should be running things during their first month on the job. I am not sure if these are symptoms of "what's in it for me" or a general entitlement mentality, but it is quite pervasive.
On the other hand, I have found some younger, very hard-working employees that I have been able to hand responsibility over to in conjunction with increasing their pay. It is fairly tough to find that work ethic and sense of ownership in new hires, however.
14
As a business owner, I would have assumed you’d be well familiar with the "what’s in it for me" mindset considering it is the fundamental basis of a functioning capitalist society.
4
It takes four years for her employees to go from $10 an hour to $25 an hour...That’s a long time to wait to make a living wage.
9
Four years of OJT training as a substitute for ineffective K-12 "education" may be a highly efficient -- or the ONLY way -- for many to get to "a living wage."
Now 69 w/a recently retired law license and work ethic that opened many highly paid opportunities, I am stymied by the number of parents who hand car keys to 16-17 year olds and say "You can work to pay my insurance premium increase." What has happened to my Midwest father's WWII pilot's immutable rule for his high-school age kids: "You have a job. It's called school. For those who can, I expect you to get scholarships . . .to help pay tuition for siblings who cannot."
Early teen years -- often w/single parents -- it may be tempting to get an extra driver's license to make daily shuttling routines easier. To cover insurance cost increases w/$8.05/hr part-time really hard work at Dunkin Donuts nights or weekends . . .instead of setting one laser-focused message: do well in school so that you can be ready to do well college. Two-year live-at-home classes followed by a mainstream degree finished on a big campus with in-state tuition.
And, for Heaven & The Future's sake do not major in "IT" - study English/History/math/engineering . . .to get face-to-face communication skills so desperately lacking among Internet Age young adults.
6
In the 1960s, you had two-parent households and stay-at-home moms who could afford to spend their days shuttling around teens to school, sports, activities, and friends. It’s 2017. Your mom works full time. You can’t “get a college education” without a packed schedule of “extracurriculars” which you need some way of getting to and from. For working and middle class families today, having teens be able to transport themselves and younger siblings is virtually a requirement.
3
Way back when, I was paid to lift things up and put them down elsewhere for my employer, a manufacturer. This was before I went to get a bit of higher education.
The company offered to pay my way for a degree if I'd agree to then work for them a minimum of four years after. I wasn't interested in becoming a packaging engineer, but I wonder how many companies nowadays are providing partnerships with local schools or apprenticeships for bottom-rung employees who show promise?
10
"....people walking to work along a busy road because they do not have cars and there are no city buses."
How willing are people to take a job paying $10 an hour if they have to walk to work in December in a cold, snowy place along a busy road because they can't afford a car and there are no buses going to the place they work?
This is grim. Maybe there would be a better 'work ethic' in these factories if the greedy owners arranged some reasonable form of transportation to get their workers to the factories. If the city won't provide buses, why not have shuttles that can take people to work? Who in their right mind wants a very low-paying job they can't access except by a long walk along a busy street in freezing weather or heavy snow? Sounds like people are right that business owners don't pay workers well enough or display commitment to the company. Where's the company's commitment to them?
14
In Michigan, in the absence of public transportation, we also need to enable our economically poorer young neighbors to get to community colleges. If we stop waiting for our politicians to solve this problem, and instead do it ourselves, we may actually get this done.
3
Please more articles like this. What can businesses and high schools do to improve the skills gap? Yes, we have community colleges and vocational schools but all the pieces are not working together.
Many kids are leaving high school and going to college when they would be better suited and happier pursuing a skilled trade. Why aren't we helping these kids?
17
A military style system of career assignment coupled with directing people to where the jobs are would be the most efficient use of capital AND tax dollars.
2
A civilian system of aptitude testing combined with a scientific approach to career assignment, based on the DoD's ASVAB model could be created through coordinating business needs with the output abilities of our public schools. If ten percent of the workforce is in retail and wholesale logistics, then we should focus on providing ten percent of students with the skills needed by those employers. If only half of job titles truly require a college education, then we need to limit college to that half of the student body. There's a reason that the armed forces don't have too many lawyers yet not enough truck drivers - both being civilian economic problems detailed in the NYT. Likewise, we would avoid the waste inherent in paying for K-12 coursework for those who will end up assigned to change tires at Costco or unload trucks at FedEx by moving them into those jobs as soon as they can physically perform them rather than after an arbitrary number of years in school.
6
I like your approach. I agree with being more flexible with regards to career aim. But what do you say regarding the moving target phenomenon: when we educate, are we shooting at the jobs of yesteryear, today or tomorrow? Should we educate up to supply the kind of workforce our best competitors will have in 5-10 years?
1
Do the young humans handled by the "output abilities of our public schools" get any say in what career you slot them into?
Or is the idea that young people in public school (I noticed you didn't just say "school") should just be processed and dropped into a planned economy where commissars of the latest five-year plan see a need?
3
Yes, and people in low skills jobs should be paid well if that’s what they are capable of.
1
Recommend young people in high school look at their local - and regional - community colleges as the next step to take for work and careers. Those institutions got the message years ago about becoming and being THE place where skills can be sharpened and learned for many, many jobs that are out there and will be developed in the future in tech, health care, education. Yes, a 4-year-degree is often needed and can be highly valued, but not everyone wants that or needs that. Many jobs don't require a BA/BS. And never will. But an associate degree also can be the right and most economical step to get the BA/BS. Take a look at your local CC site and open the door to opportunity!
22
So just what are they doing to address these issues. Do they work with say local high schools to identify those that might be capable? Do they insist on people being already totally trained for their openings? Do they actually train anybody. Whining does not work, solutions do.
15
Employers will always say, "We can't find good people" but "wages aren't rising." Always. THIS IS NOT A LABOR SHORTAGE. Wages go up in a labor shortage. Employers pay people more, and invest in training them. If the price of something -- be it gasoline, labor, or real estate -- isn't rising, there is no shortage. The Times has once again stumbled on the phenomenon of greedy and lazy employers -- the skills shortage is at THE TOP.
36
Applying the laws of supply and demand to labor is communism. In capitalism, labor can never be given equal status to capital.
1
I worked my way up through different positions to rise to one of the most important sales jobs in the industry in which I was employed before starting my own asset management firm. You're correct that there's a skill issue in upper management. Many managers don't have a clue how to manage and motivate employees. Never mind the comprehension and understanding a manager has to have in order to successfully handle today's problem areas such as sexual harassment. On the other hand, I can tell you emphatically that the basic education and job skills of today's employees is sorely lacking. There are several areas of concern with today's employees that I found very troubling. Math and reasoning skills and basic employment skills were lacking. Simple algebraic equations, percentages, stuff my generation did in their heads without calculators can't be solved by many of today's employees. It's not an employer's responsibility to teach basic algebra and percentages to employees. Nor, should employers have to phone an employee to wake them up so they can be at work on time. And, don't get me started on cell phones. If I inadvertently forgot to mention to an employee that they could only use their cell phones during breaks, they would forget about their work. Their social life was much more important than the work related to the job for which they were hired.
4
The first time I have read a business article addressing the lack of a work ethic in so many of today's workers. So many of us late in our working career, know we started in minimum wage jobs, we learned the business, we worked hard, we advanced, are salaries grew. The very talented walk out of college into high paying positions, but they also worked very hard in college to get that great job offer. Experience, skills, talent and mostly importantly hard work are the way forward in business.
24
This reminds of Long Island, Nassua and Suffolk counties. Their talent and money kept going to Manhattan and Brooklyn. Why? No Downtown. No walk to clubs restaurants or schools and parks. Families are smaller meeting friends making business connections is harder without a larger volume of people. Zoning laws have to change to allow for greater density and shared public spaces.
14
Lowering corporate tax rates would not result in any additional hiring, growth in wages or output. The entire incidence of a corporate income tax falls on the owners of the corporation, to the extent they are pension funds or other institutions the incidence falls on them. If a corporate income tax is a percentage of pretax income, none of the corporate income tax can ever be passed on to employees or customers. That is because any hiring, wage or price decision that maximizes pretax profits would also maximize after-tax profits.
If a profit-maximizing rational corporation is charging $10 for an item that is because it is more profitable to charge $10 than $9.99 or $10.01 taking into account market demand and competitive pressures. Thus, $10 is the price at which pretax profits are maximized. If a corporate income tax is levied as a percent of pretax profits, $10 is still the price that maximizes both pretax and after-tax profits. Thus, the tax can not cause any change in the price and is not passed on to consumers. The same applies to a corporation that is paying a wage that maximized its pretax profits, which is also the wage that maximizes its after-tax profits. Likewise, the number of employees and level of output that maximizes pretax profits is also the number of employees that maximize after-tax profits.
The falsehood that corporations do not pay income taxes, but rather their customers and employees do, has been repeated .."
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4067359
6
But with lower taxes the risk of not earning an appropriate return on your investments is less, thus investments that would be inappropriate are now acceptable.
1
My 2 cents, although I’m just an amateur:
1) It must be true that it takes time for prices to adjust to demand and other factors. It’s not instantaneous.
2) Where it is possible to lower prices in order to sell more of something, maximizing profits on volume (so called price elasticity), some competitors will choose this strategy rather than holding prices fixed.
Is it not possible that some industries will react to having an increase in post-tax income by lowering prices in the short term to take advantage of price elasticity, thus causing markets, in time, to reach new price equilibria?
It’s worth mentioning I have no idea how much effect this would have overall on the economy.