In NZ most people are still labouring under the impression that eternal growth is possible and that all will be well with the global economy but here are some terrifying fact which should make you ponder the possibility that we are in for a truly horrifying time.
Have you ever heard of the dodo bird? Once upon a time, dodo birds lived on the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. But if you go there today you won’t find any because they are extinct. Well, if you are a blue collar worker in America today it looks like you are headed for a similar fate. Blue collar workers are truly becoming an “endangered species” in the United States. In the old days, the balance of power between business owners and labor was more even because they both needed each other. But today that has all changed. Thanks to robotics, automation and computers there is simply not as much of a need for physical laborers anymore and nothing is going to reverse that trend. Big employers will continue to look for ways to replace men with machines, and there is nothing wrong with that. But there is another major trend that is also destroying blue collar jobs in America that we shoulddo something about. Right now, it is perfectly legal for big corporations to shut down manufacturing facilities in the United States and send the jobs over to nations on the other side of the globe where it is legal to pay slave labor wages and where there are barely any regulations. As you will see later on this article, this has been the biggest reason for the shocking blue collar job losses in America over the past decade. The big corporations don’t care that you need to pay the mortgage and put food on the table for your families. All they care about it the bottom line, and if dramatic changes are not made soon, the number of blue collar jobs leaving the United States will continue to increase.
Once upon a time, almost everyone who wanted a job in America could get one. If you go back a few decades, you will find that about 95 percent of all men between the ages of 25 and 54 had a job. Today that figure is struggling to stay above 80 percent.
If you are a blue collar worker in America, you are simply not valued. Your bosses are constantly trying to think of ways to replace you or send your job overseas.
According to Reuters, 23.7 million American workers are either unemployed or underemployed right now. The more “blue collar” you are, the more likely you are to be unemployed. The following chart that shows the unemployment rate during 2010 broken down by level of education comes from the Bureau of Labor Statistics….
If you are an unskilled worker in America today, you simply are not needed. Yes, once upon a time nearly anyone could go out and get a factory job, but those days are over. Neither major political party seems the least bit interested in trying to keep manufacturing jobs in America.
Back in the year 2000, more than 20 percent of all jobs in America were manufacturing jobs. Today, about 5 percent of all jobs in America are manufacturing jobs.
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Tags: blue collar job, blue collar worker, dodo, economic collapse, not needed
