What’s It Take to Get a Job?

As we all well know, we are blessed to live in this country, and from a comfort and enjoyment perspective, we have made unimaginable strides over the years in improving what was already very good. So why the funk?
Well, we humans are just funny creatures; our sense of happiness comes from our perspective on how we are meeting our expectations: Am I doing better than before? How am I doing compared to my peers? It amazes me to hear sports figures gripe about their pay: “I only get $3 milllion and Joe gets $10 million!” So it seems to me that our take-away from that ought to be: Be grateful for what we have, as we continue to strive to do better.
Well how are we doing? According to Eduardo Porto’s piece in The New York Times, “America’s Shrinking Middle Class,” the typical household earned roughly the same as a quarter century ago, and over 36 years the number living in poverty increased from 11.6 to 15 percent.
It’s clear that we are moving backward. Why? It really is no mystery. We all know money doesn’t grow on trees. Things happen when people have a specific goal in mind, and do whatever it takes to achieve it. America was built by people who knew that.
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Countless jobs, yet millions unemployed.
Impact of misdirected governmental leadership.
The fallout from ObamaCare.
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Robert Funk is the founder of Express Employment Services with 600 offices across the U.S. In a recent interview by the Wall Street Journal, he outlined the primary obstacles that he finds are holding our economy back, and helping to keep unemployment so high.
One thing is the coming of ObamaCare, because it has made firms reluctant to hire more workers because of the mandates and penalties. Another limiter is the growing list of regulations of all types.
At the personal level, he finds a decline in the American work ethic as well as a negative attitude toward entry-level jobs. He maintains that any job is the best social program on the ladder of success. For this reason, he dislikes the ever-increasing minimum wage, which limits the number of entry-level jobs.
Even though there are 20 million unemployed or underemployed, he says, to people who are drug-free and who have integrity and a strong work ethic: “I guarantee I can find employers tomorrow who will hire you.” He has 20,000 jobs he cannot fill.
His company’s experience is that only one in six workers who come to him are employable. Unfortunately, the reasons so many are unemployable are not the focus of our government programs. It is not politically correct to find fault with the worker, yet that is precisely where the problems are. To correct these shortcomings, he says we must shrink the social-welfare state in order to get at the attitude that the government will always be there to take care of them.
Another job killer is the 14 million out on disability insurance; his company has found that half of the disability claims turned out to be fraudulent.
Funk tells young students to seek careers where jobs are plentiful, such as accounting, information technology, manufacturing-robotics programming, welding, engineering and vocational and practical skills. He advises to avoid psychology, political science or sociology.
Back to the question: So why the funk? Common sense tells most Americans the give-away state isn’t working, and we have to again place our feet on solid ground.
From the Bible
“If anyone doesn’t want to work, they shouldn’t eat.” 2 Thessalonians 3:10 (CEB)