Friday, April 02, 2021

Nothing We Can Do

A lot of things were frustrating about The Great Recession era, and one of them was that all the Very Serious People blamed high unemployment on sKiLls mIsMaTch, and then once the economy picked up, cited it again when employers were complaining that they couldn't find skilled welders for $9/hour locally or whatever.

The economy was plunged into a deep recession for reasons we could all clearly see (it was on the news) and suddenly unemployment existed because people did poli sci degreees in 2004 instead of Learning To Code (there weren't any jobs coding, either). Then location and sector-specific wage pressure was also a problem of People Making Poor Choices instead of, you know, the fact that if you want a good welder you gotta pay them more than 9 bucks an hour.