Last month I posted a video of Mike Rowe, from Dirty Jobs, testifying before Congress about the need to support training programs for the types of difficult, but essential, jobs he highlights on his show. Commenter Annabe let us know about Rowe’s TED talk, in which he discusses some of the lessons he’s learned from doing the show. It’s worth a watch:
Comments 6
Anonymous — June 25, 2011
We are at a war with skilled work... this isn't necessarily a bad thing. Although its not very practical in the short run. We need skilled workers, until we can make robots to do those jobs.
On the flip side, we are able to maintain skilled work alive without any government assistance. It's as if people that need money look for those jobs! The cost of living in the US makes it inefficient for us to be doing more then the minimum amount of these jobs.
Its hard to build an economy consisting of pure innovation, while others produce.
Jonathan — June 25, 2011
If you look at the stagnation of real wages, it makes sense that these jobs are shrinking and that people don't want to do them. You used to be able to make a good living as an electrician. But now, you make less money relative to the economy and your clients have lower disposable cash to spend getting electrical work done. It makes it not worth it to become an electrician. If we want more of these types of blue collar jobs, we'd need a massive downward redistribution of wealth. The type of redistribution that can only really be accomplished by the tax code.