This just in: As of August 2017, there were 6.2 million unfilled jobs in the United States.
I know there are people thinking, “If there are so many jobs, why don’t I have one?”
There could be a lot of reasons for this. Maybe the jobs are not in your town. Maybe you are over or under qualified. Maybe you want a job type that is currently not available.
Still, if you want a job, there is no shortage.
Now...this is important…the number one thing holding the United States back as far as growth of GDP is the lack of people to fill current job openings.
That’s right. We need more people if we want our economy to grow.
My profession consists, in large part, helping companies to expand. An auto maker has 1,000 employees and needs to increase production by 40%. I help them to do that. The biggest hurdle is always, “Where are we going to find the people we need in order to facilitate this expansion.” The last project I did was in Wisconsin where the local unemployment is 2.8%. There is no extra labor just laying around.
I read a report a month ago that said we needed 44 million immigrants in the next 10 years to meet the economic growth the GOP is counting on to pay for at least part of their tax cut.
Knowing this. Knowing that (1) we have tons of jobs available right now and (2) we need millions of immigrants if our economy is remain vibrant…why are we arguing about immigration and building walls?
Why are we shipping out people that are helping our economy to grow?
We should be actively looking for ways to attract even more immigration, not less.
Trump and the Republican Party are continuing to do the Exact Opposite of what needs to be done.
Yes…we should take steps to keep out people we don’t want.
Yes…we should be able to account for those that we actually do let in.
But let’s let them in if they want to come and don’t represent a burden (lazy, criminal etc).
The current arguments about keeping people out are being made by people clearly unschooled in what our economy needs in order to thrive.
“Build a Wall!” and “Keep out the illegals” make for great bumper stickers but have very little to do with what we need to be focusing on.
Just sayin…
Up, up and away…
Jim
