“On Craigslist, Coal Lobby Offers $50 To Wear Pro-Coal T-Shirts At Regulatory Meeting.”
Bringing out the fake supporters, since they apparently can’t find real ones.
Boom.
Does this 1903 oil painting foreshadow 21st century global water conflicts? Brian Richter, co-leader of The Nature Conservancy’s global freshwater team, has started sharing the image in his presentations, including one Tuesday at the University of Minnesota’s Solutions Summit (which I covered for Finance & Commerce). Frederic Remington painted “The Fight for the Watering Hole” almost 110 years ago, but it’s not far fetched to see our future in it. Water conflicts are already a reality. (The Pacific Institute is tracking them here.) As pollution, population growth and climate change strain the world’s freshwater, we can probably expect to see more standoffs over our remaining supplies.
Why are skilled manufacturing jobs going unfilled? It could be because companies are being too picky. Maybe they don’t want an older worker, or maybe they don’t want to invest in training that could help a worker round out his/her skills. Or maybe America’s manufacturers have shrunk their potential applicant pool by shipping all manner of manufacturing work - skilled and unskilled - to Mexico or China or other low wage regimes. The message, intended or not, is that those skills are not valued.
Worker “skills gap” also about pay gap
Reading coverage of yesterday’s Minnesota jobs summit — much of which focused on a reported “skills gap” between unemployed Minnesotans and available jobs — I was reminded of something state economic researcher Steve Hine told me last year while I was reporting on the state’s so-called “IT talent gap.”
Steve Hine, research director for the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development, says he sees very little evidence of an IT talent gap. “I get a little bit cynical, perhaps, about some of these trade associations and chambers of commerce indicating that there’s not enough workers with the right skills, that they can’t hire anybody,” Hine says. “We see very little evidence of that, and what is always neglected in those statements is: ‘I can’t find anybody—at the wage I’m offering.’”
Traci Tapani, owner of a metal fabrication company in Stacy, Minn., tells the Star Tribune she was surprised she couldn’t find a skilled worker for $36,000 a year. Columnist Eric Wieffering, who focuses on the need to invest in education and workers, quotes JobsNow Coalition director Kris Jacobs saying: “Just because you can’t find a new truck for $10,000 doesn’t mean there’s a shortage of trucks.”
And if we want more trucks? Back to Hine:
Job opportunities and earning potential drive students’ decisions to choose one field over another, Hine says: “Whether or not there’s a shortage or a surplus in eight years depends largely on how responsive these wage offers and acceptances are to the changing conditions.”
