Here’s an interesting passage from a Wall Street Journal piece by Bob Tita on the employment situation faced by the construction industry:
About one-fifth of construction workers are older than 55 years old and are often the most skilled workers or supervisors on a job site, the builders-and-contractors group said. As older, higher-skilled workers retire or leave for other jobs, many contractors haven’t been able to quickly replace them with younger workers with the same skill levels.
Those twenty percent are Baby Boomers. Telling kids for more than a generation that there’s something wrong with working with your hands and a bright future means getting a college education has a price.
It isn’t just the construction industry. Of the top 20 box office movie stars six are Baby Boomers and one is Silent Generation (Harrison Ford). That’s a third and several of the others are older Gen Xers.
The same situation exists in the agriculture sector. For example, picking and packing of fruits and vegetables is done largely by Latin Americans and Haitians in Florida. Try. I dare anyone. To get Americans to do it.
I’ve posted on that very subject. The job was done by Americans relatively recently. When the Americans started to organize themselves into unions they were replaced practically overnight en masse by immigrants.
With the caveat that getting good data is difficult, the composition of the farm labor force by ethnicity – at least in FL – has been remarkably stable. The Florida Farm Workers were organized in 1983. The jobs were not predominantly Americans prior to that. A huge influx of foreigners occurred not by force of unions, but illegals. And that’s a chicken and egg situation.
Ask anyone in the ag, landscaping or construction business in FL if they get applications from American workers. Not a chance.