Demand for High Paying Jobs After Lay offs
Over the past year or so many plants in Parkersburg, WV have been closing leading to many lay offs. Many of these workers came right out of high school to work, skipping totally their college education. Most of the workers were making wages well above minimum wage. All these workers have ever known was the jobs they have been working and recieved many payment increases as their time with the companies went on. Now that they've been laid off the only jobs they can seem to find are jobs that only pay between $7-10 an hour. Many of these people have been passing on these "low paying" jobs because of the prices of gas, or because the position wasn't quite right for them. With all of these lay offs over the years the competition to find the good paying jobs has increased greatly. One man said that there may be 20 jobs that are available in the area and 500 people who could be completely qualified to do the job.
Granted some people are taking the low paying jobs because they need the job, and some other assistance is being offered to these people. Some are going to college to take courses that could prepare them for the higher paying jobs, while recieving assistance.
The choice of what one should do is hard. It's the typical supply and demand situation. There is a shortage of the "good paying" jobs. What would anyone in this situation do?
1 comment:
Yes, the workers chose to go into the work force without receiving a college degree. However, we can't forget about opprotunity costs, and that the option of a decent paying job better fitted their lifestyles than going to college. Also, lay offs aren't expected, there are plenty of people who have earned college degrees and a company closes leaving them without a job. So to say that all the blame goes on them for not getting a college degree is not that logical. However, some of them do need to take jobs that are less paying than their previous ones, because they do need to make a living and not live off of welfare, but collegecould also be a cost that they can not afford.
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