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Executives at a recent meeting of the WPMA.
If you have good woodworking skills, which I assume you do if you’re reading this, and you’re still in the workforce but currently unemployed, you may be interested in this.
Recently at a meeting of the Wood Products Manufacturers Association, executives were asked to list their main business challenges. Nearly all listed the same three: finding skilled workers, tariffs, and problems in the trucking industry.
First, and most often cited, was the inability to find skilled workers with good work ethics. The reasons given were the low unemployment rate, so fewer people were looking for work; the poor work ethic of the younger generation (“What’s the least I can do and still keep my job?”); and the rural location of many businesses, so there were fewer people in the candidate pool.
Tariffs and trucking problems were beyond the ability of these executives to solve, but there were lots of suggestions addressing the work force. These included offering higher pay, creating more accommodating schedules, hiring ex-cons, offering incentives such as paying a portion of college tuition, and quarterly bonuses based on profitability.
One suggestion many of us would probably agree on is advocating for more woodworking courses in high schools and Vo-techs.
On one level these are societal problems that should be addressed. On another level, you may be able to take advantage of the situation to get a job.
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Except getting a job in a backwards society makes you a sellout
In terms what what we could be doing, the paying jobs of a broken society are likely minimally beneficial to mankind or low on moral standards (when you factor that the world is ours to share and that we are all born into gratitude) [I recommend the works of Charles Eisenstein].
When your job is to improve the lives of the haves over the have nots it’s hard to care and one needs to care to want to hone their skill.
How about all generations that reached adulthood are to blame.
I’ve always wondered if the work ethic impression is correlated to the breakdown in the pension system. If a company doesn’t invest in the long term finacial health of workers, why should the worker care about the company, other than means to a paycheck? These relationships are a two way street.