A sobering article on the need for more people to go into trades

We as a nation have done a poor job of informing and educating our youth to set them up for success in the labor force:

Ford CEO says ‘America’s in trouble’ after offering $120,000 a year yet no American wants the job

Ford CEO Jim Farley didn’t mince words when he appeared on the Office Hours: Business Edition podcast. “We are in trouble in our country,” he said plainly. “We are not talking about this enough,” Farley argued that a quiet but serious skilled labor shortage is threatening American industry and that most people haven’t noticed yet.

At the time of the podcast, Ford had roughly 5,000 open mechanic positions, each paying up to $120,000 a year. That’s nearly double the average U.S. salary of $66,622. Yet Farley says dealership bays sit idle — equipped with lifts, stocked with tools, and no one to fill them. The money is there. The workers, he says, are not.

Farley was quick to say Ford is just one piece of a much larger picture. He estimated over a million unfilled openings in what he called “critical jobs,” among them emergency services, trucking, factory work, plumbing, and electrical trades. “It’s a very serious thing,” he said. The automotive sector is simply the most visible example of a nationwide pattern.

The numbers behind the trend are stark. Forbes estimates more than 345,000 new skilled trade jobs will open in the U.S. before 2028. For every five trained workers who retire, only two step in to replace them. And unlike white-collar roles, these trades are largely insulated from AI displacement. Robots can’t replace a transmission or rewire a breaker box.

I suppose the saving grace in all this is that hopefully our youth do graduate will the critical thinking skills to navigate all things LGBTQ+ and CRT.:zany_face:

I have pushed my children towards the trades. Less, but more focused training required, lower overall cost for training, high demand for skilled workers = more employment opportunity, and higher income earlier in life.

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At least libism has given people with these types of skills:

Terrifying moment gang raids jewelry store for $1.7M in one minute

Remember when people told unemployed coalminers to “learn to code”?

There is a limit to how many people we need sitting in cubicles banging away at keyboards. We may have reached if. In a few years tradesman can bank 100k while college grads are still 150k in debt.

Funny thing. I read an article today where an engineer tells the robutt what he wants it to do, comes back in a few hours and the Robutt has coded itself. Amazing. And a little spooky.

Exactly, my youngest only needed 2 semesters of training, only 5 total classes, at the community college, to get her EMT certification, sit for the national certification test and get her EMT license. It cost me a whopping $1,600 dollars. Within 3 months she was hired on by county EMS service and hasn’t looked back. She is only 19. She is putting away money now, and plans to upgrade her certification from EMT to Paramedic once she has some more experience. She is going to do this without ever going into debt. And AI isn’t going to replace medical first responders.

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I’ve been preaching it for years now…hell since I arrive here on this forum that trades are being left unfulfilled. And it’s largely because society and yes even business been undermining very workers they need to have.

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….and here lies the root cause. Fathers not in the home pushing their children.

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Seems like there needs to be some sort of training on how to be a good dad. What do you suggest?

My best recommendation is to observe your father and do the same.

You constantly claim fathers not being good fathers is the cause of many issues. If that is the case, how do we change that? How do we convince men to be good fathers? Are economics part of the issue?

Practice our national motto; In God We Trust. This nation needs to get back to our traditonal roots and stop presenting the liberal insanity and if it’s normal. The trans thingy that’s taken place in the last decade is a perfect example. Look how many children were confused by it. It’s grown over 4000% due to this positive promoting of trans. Promoting being a good father, the media promoting it, our government promoting it. Good things can be promoted or bad things but either way, it will have an effect.

Religion is not the answer. What specific traditional roots?

Trans people exist. A group of people that is less than 1% of the population is not the problem.

It’s already out there, has been for over 2,000 years. The father gave us the word, and sets the example for us. But if a man won’t even acknowledge the Father, let alone seek him, and his teachings out, don’t expect him to be a good example, or his son’s to grow up to be good father’s either.

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Mike Rowe (Dirty Jobs) has been hammering this for years.

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How did fathers do it before Christianity/Judaism, assuming that is the father you are referring to?

Also, does this include the OT?

Are other “fathers” from other religions able to create good fathers? Can fathers that are agnostic or atheists be and /or create good fathers?

The Father teaches that a man is to serve, provide for and protect his family, That being a husband and a father, is a responsibility, not a selfish perk of being male. More, and more, we don’t just ignore, but reject the Father’s teaching and commandments. And we have, since the creation of the so called “Great Society,” subsidized fatherless homes. And since we have subsidized it, we shouldn’t be surprised that we now have more if it than before. Not even considering the damage done to daughters whose father isn’t in their monthly, let alone daily, life, the damage done to the sons is even worse. Rather than seeing their father set a good example to them, they instead see generations of older fatherless men, addicted to selfishness and irresponsibility, as their example of how a man who fathers a child should act, never seeing how a husband should act. They often are taught to ridicule the very idea of being responsible as a man. And they do this because they have been taught by the popular society that selfish is the noble way.

Its not exactly rocket science is it? Focus on what actions you can take to improve your life specifically professionally and don’t have children unless your married and in a good economic situation in life.

Normal people won’t do something like this. But bold or desperate people will. To them it’s unsecured money. Like taking candy from a baby.