So Why Are So Many Quitting?

 The real reason is the fact that record numbers of baby boomers retired during the pandemic and feel it is too dangerous to return.  I think this is the most important reason:

No Tears for the Dudes

who have benefitted from denigrating female-dominated fields in order for women to be forced into marriage and men get sexual access.

You guys keep voting the wrong way, and you have been doing it for decades, and then you whine that you can't find "suitable" work.

Not likely the pay for female-dominated jobs will ever go up because the reason those jobs are denigrated will not be given up.

Furthermore, the article is just crap. Men are not entitled to jobs, period, just because they are men. Women need jobs just as much or more than men and are sick and tired of being denigrated. Many men cannot cut it in so-called women's fields because of intellectual shortcomings, which many of those jobs have far more skills and education required, but they are denigrated because women do them. The pay gap is real, folks, and it is there for a reason, a reason that would make virtually everybody uncomfortable with the truth. It has nothing to do with perceived lifestyles of women, "career choices," or differences in education and skills, because women are still denigrated regardless of the occupation, female-dominated or not.

Do people in the article actually think that because more women are in medicine and law, that if they predominate those fields--right now they are one-third of both--the pay and prestige will remain? Are you kidding? Historically pay and prestige have always gone down when women predominate a field, Men will never go into female-dominated fields because there is a reason why those jobs are denigrated. Underpaying women is a form of economic coercion against women. Men will not pay women what they are worth because they bitterly despise women having any shot of living lives independent of them.

It has to do with the purpose of denigrating the jobs. The purpose of paying women worse than men is to force them into marriage, to be dependents on men, so men in return get sexual access to their bodies. No other explanation has ever made any sense, and this one is the only one that explains it. Men are not going to go into the "women's" fields because deep down they KNOW why those jobs are poorly paid.

NOT Good News

None of this is good news as much as the article tries to spin it as such. The economy is worse here now than it was 30 years ago when I had to relocate to another state. That is the end result of shortsighted policies and beliefs since the late 1960s that said the Rogue Valley should be nothing but a retirement destination for wealthy Californians and their doctors, hence all of the mobile home parks that sprouted up during that era. The medical field is not a good option for most people in terms of jobs because only a certain personality type can stand that type of work being around sick or dying people or people who need operations or routine medical help. For the better paying jobs, it takes YEARS of education to do the work. Clerical work in this field is hardly better, and many people are forced to work odd shifts in order to make a living. Nurse's aides jobs are absolutely horrible and have high turnover. Furthermore, the medical field is even more incestuous than even public education in trying to get a job.

The Rogue Valley needs a major change in direction to expand its economy beyond one or two fields. It's long overdue.

Etc.

Much has been made of the recent death of one-time "Marlboro Man" Eric Lawson because he, like several others who were hired for the job, died of smoking-related diseases.

Lawson was 72 and died of COPD, the disease that recently caused the death of rock great Phil Everly and was also the cause of death of my mother back in 1999.

Exactly how many rugged he-man types portrayed the Marlboro Man over the years isn't clear, although Lawson was one of dozens. His wife said Monday he was friendly with some of the others, including Wayne McLaren, a former rodeo rider who died in 1992 of lung cancer that he blamed on his lifelong smoking habit. Like Lawson, McLaren spent his final years advocating against smoking. So did David McLean, who died in 1995 of lung cancer that he also blamed on smoking. He was 73.

The "Marlboro Man" was the subject of a controversial UK television program in 1976 called Death in the West. The program can be seen on YouTube.
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Does the First Amendment apply to educators who find themselves sacked?
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All of the job growth must be in the Portland area, for I am seeing NOTHING down here.
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Yet another reason why education should not be a "for-profit" business.

For-profit education companies are facing public criticism and regulatory scrutiny over high drop-out rates, graduates' poor job prospects and the high debt levels of its students. Enrollments have also been shrinking for years in response to tighter regulation and the modest economic recovery.

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A disgraced journalist who has long rehabilitated himself in the area of law can't get a break to be a laywer. Of course lawyers don't want somebody known to be a liar to enter a profession that is full of them.

It's kind of like what teachers go through.

In case you never saw this interview:

'60 Minutes' (CBS, Season 35, Episode 37) from Larry Knight on Vimeo.

Part-Time America

That's where this country's economy is headed, and it is aided and abetted by Washington policies in order to force our living standards down to third world levels:

The Obama administration is directing this attack, encouraging wage cutting and the reduction of large sections of workers to the status of casual laborers. Obama’s so-called health care “reform,” the ACA, was designed to facilitate this process by encouraging employers to reduce the hours of employees so as to evade requirements that they provide health insurance to full-time workers.

Low-wage, part-time and temporary labor—this is the essence of the administration’s so-called “jobs program.” Obama has pledged to “revive” US manufacturing and increase US exports by making American companies more competitive on world markets. What he does not say is that the heart of his strategy—and that of the ruling class as a whole—is the destruction of all of the social gains won by generations of American workers over the past century.

I sure hope there is a place in hell for these neoliberals who have done such a terrible disservice to the public.

American Workers Are Screwed

My dad would have been 106 years old today. When he started working as a young man, he made a dollar a day. If he were alive now, he'd see how we are reverting to those times before there were protections put in place for workers as a result of the Great Depression.

Congress and the various presidents are directly responsible for this current mess of dismantling the progress of the last century. They gave a tiny elite more tax breaks and more loopholes to exploit and made everybody else pay through the nose for it. It's been called "reverse Robin Hood."

Our D.C. politicians of both political parties have proven there isn't a two-party system anymore but one party in service to the parasitical class running things.

The result: America is looking increasingly like the third world with its proliferation of low-wage jobs:

Over the past four months, the US economy has added 791,000 new part-time jobs, but only 187,000 full-time jobs. This is despite the fact that part-time work makes up less than 20 percent of all existing employment in the US.

Sixty-one percent of the jobs created so far this year have been in low-paying industries, even though employment in these sectors constitutes less than 40 percent of total jobs in the US, according to an analysis by Moody’s Analytics. The fastest job growth has been in retail sales, food preparation, freight and warehouse work, wait staff, and home health care—positions that pay less than $12 an hour.

Part-time work will be the new standard, especially when Obamacare becomes the law of the land.

We're in the Money

Life is as rotten as can be if you are in the bottom of the income spectrum.

It's change we can all believe in, even when we have utterly no change in our pockets:

The survey revealed that many people at the lowest rung in the workplace view their jobs as a dead end. Half were “not too” or “not at all” confident that their jobs would help them achieve long-term career goals. And only 41 percent of workers at the same place for more than a decade reported ever receiving a promotion.

Yet 44 percent of employers surveyed said it’s hard to recruit people with appropriate skills or experiences to do lower-wage jobs, particularly in manufacturing (54 percent). While 88 percent of employers said they were investing in training and education for employee advancement, awareness and use of such programs among the lower-wage workers was only modest.

Employers are so full of shit. They want people to have all of these "skills," but they want to pay people 10 bucks an hour, part-time, with no benefits.

You pay trash, you will get trash or very desperate people who will quit at the first opportunity to better themselves.

And for those who have ambitions to make poverty-level pay for the rest of their lives, here are the eight lowest-paying jobs in the country:

1. Food preparation and serving workers, including fast food

2. Dishwashers

3. Cashiers

4. Hosts and hostesses

5. Amusement park attendants

6. Movie theater ushers, ticket takers

7. Farm workers

8. Personal and home care aides


These are some of the hardest jobs in the economy and necessary jobs, but they pay absolute shit.

Stating the Obvious

Of course the fastest growing and most numerous jobs are invariably lousy paid.

Thanks to the exportation of millions of good jobs overseas, what are left are crap jobs.

News--or Gossip

I don't know how much credence I give to this piece which says USSC Chief Justice John Roberts, only 55, is considering stepping down from the high court.

I'll just say I'll believe it when I see it.

Apparently it is nonsense.
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The House passed a $15 billion jobs bill just so the Senate can screw it up, just as it always does.
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For $13.95 million you can buy this outrageous bit of tacky real estate currently owned by Rush Limbaugh.

I'll admit I kinda like the bedroom with the beach mural and the palm tree bedposts. He must constantly fantasize about Florida.

The place otherwise looks like a tacky funeral parlor.
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Don't Expect the Job Situation

to improve much before the 2012 elections, and guess who is going to be blamed for it?

Nobody has the political will to do what is needed, and that's having job creation programs ala the WPA.

I Found This List

ranking the top 200 jobs from best to worst.

I was surprised photographer or photojournalist was ranked so low. Teaching, though, doesn't surprise me one damned bit. It is in the lower half of the rankings. It is bound to go lower.

Where the Jobs Are

It's the same old shit jobs--mostly--at the same old shit pay.

Few people can STAND anything to do with medical, yet that is what a number of these jobs on the list are.

One thing about this list, and that we are spared the "fastest-growing" nonsense which means NOTHING in terms of numbers.

Sales clerks, clerical workers, retail sales, the usual crap with lots and lots of turnover.

Almost all of these jobs are traditional female jobs, and, with the exception of nurses, low paying. But nursing has a lot of openings because it is such a terrible job with horrible hours and working conditions. Naturally, there is a lot of turnover. As for the other "pink-collar" jobs, the reason those jobs pay crap is because they aren't supposed to be jobs that support an individual, let alone a family. Those jobs are considered "secondary wage earning" jobs. The "man" of the house is supposed to bring in the lion's share of the money. Small comfort to those women who don't have a man around.

Thank God I am about at retirement age if I am not already. Or that I can retire with piles of money if I can get a lawyer to help me sue WCSD's crooked ass.

While Millions of People

are extremely unhappy being unemployed, those that have jobs aren't much happier.

Job satisfaction is at an all-time low:

"It says something troubling about work in America. It is not about the business cycle or one grumpy generation," says Linda Barrington, managing director of human capital at the Conference Board, who helped write the report, which was released Tuesday.

If the job satisfaction trend is not reversed, economists say, it could stifle innovation and hurt America's competitiveness and productivity. And it could make unhappy older workers less inclined to take the time to share their knowledge and skills with younger workers.

The Booming Economy Casualty List for 4/11-4/18.

Vonage--1,800 jobs lost

If skilled workers don't look out for their interests and scream bloody murder about the offshoring of good jobs, they will find out there will be nothing--but nothing--left in this country.

Booming Economy Casualty List for 2/8-2/16.

Chrysler--13,000 jobs lost.

Hershey--1,500 jobs lost.