Thread: L.A.: Lack of Skilled Workers will Lead to Fiscal Crisis

Half of this city is filled with third world illegal aliens....Mexico is nation-building on our soil! Stop blaming it on the baby boomers! Which came first...the chicken or the egg? The new buzz-word is "SHARED PROSPERITY"..(Hillary is using the term now)...translation: Equal rights for Mexico!

Lack of Skilled Workers will lead to Fiscal Crisis, experts say


Demographers, economists and employers are advocating more investment in training and education for the immigrants needed to replace the huge outgoing crop of baby boomers.
By Teresa Watanabe, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
April 21, 2008

With baby boomers preparing to retire as the best educated and most skilled workforce in U.S. history, a growing chorus of demographers and labor experts is raising concerns that workers in California and the nation lack the critical skills needed to replace them.

In particular, experts say, the immigrant workers needed to fill many of the boomer jobs lack the English-language skills and basic educational levels to do so. Many immigrants are ill-equipped to fill California's fastest-growing positions, including computer software engineers, registered nurses and customer service representatives, a new study by the Washington-based Migration Policy Institute found.



Immigrants -- legal and illegal -- already constitute almost half of the workers in Los Angeles County and are expected to account for nearly all of the growth in the nation's working-age population by 2025 because native-born Americans are having fewer children. But the study, based largely on U.S. Census data, noted that 60% of the county's immigrant workers struggle with English and one-third lack high school diplomas.

The looming mismatch in the skills employers need and those workers offer could jeopardize the future economic vitality of California and the nation, experts say. Los Angeles County, the largest immigrant metropolis with about 3.5 million foreign-born residents, is at the forefront of this demographic trend.

"The question is, are we going to be a 21st century city with shared prosperity, or a Third World city with an elite group on top and the majority at poverty or near poverty wages?" asked Ernesto Cortes Jr., Southwest regional director of the Industrial Areas Foundation, a leadership development organization. "Right now we're headed toward becoming a Third World city. But we can change that."

How to respond to the inexorable demographic trends is a question sparking a flurry of studies, conferences and new programs. This week, a USC conference featuring Cortes, former federal housing secretary Henry Cisneros and other community leaders will explore ways to help immigrants better integrate into career-oriented jobs and civic life.

The Los Angeles Community College District has launched a workforce development committee of city officials and community leaders to figure out how to better prepare students for skills needed in the region.

Last week, more than 500 people gathered at Crenshaw High School at a conference sponsored by One LA-IAF, a network of more than 100 churches, unions and community groups. The network has launched a collaboration with community colleges and employers to recruit low-wage workers, many of them immigrants, and train them for jobs as nursing assistants and solar-panel installers.

"Our vision is to create a seamless program that takes undereducated, underemployed and underskilled workers and puts them into education and job training that will connect them to career ladders that pay well and offer benefits," said Yvonne Mariajimenez, a One LA leader. "It's really rebuilding the middle class."

One of the current trainees is Wendy Estrada, a 30-year-old Honduras native and naturalized U.S. citizen who aspires to move from her current work as a house cleaner to a certified nursing assistant and ultimately to work as a licensed vocational nurse.

Estrada first learned about the program at her parish, St. Thomas the Apostle Catholic Church in Los Angeles. One LA organizers came to recruit members for the pilot program, funded by the state community college system, offering free classes to upgrade English and math skills to levels required for a certified nursing assistant course.

Estrada used to dream of becoming a doctor in Honduras before marriage, motherhood and work struggles in Los Angeles waylaid those plans. She learned English soon after legally arriving in Los Angeles to join her mother in 1998, so determined to master the language that she went to classes morning and night, five hours a day, for a year.

When the recruiters came to her parish, Estrada immediately applied.

"I loved the slogan, 'Building a bridge to a new and brighter future,' " she said. "I knew that education can improve your life, but it was like I fell asleep having to work, pay the rent and just survive. This program has reawakened my dreams."

For four months, she received training at Los Angeles Valley College in basic math and English skills geared toward healthcare work -- calculating a baby's head measurement, for instance -- along with skills in time management, meeting goals, interviewing and job hunting.

In February, Estrada began her certified nursing assistant course, where she has gained both practical skills and academic knowledge. On a recent afternoon, she huddled over another student posing as a patient while trying to figure out which way to turn him to remove a protective bed pad. Instructor Dory Higgins strode over, took a quick glance and showed Estrada the right technique.

"You change the soiled pad immediately, before you do anything else, because of skin damage," Higgins said as students took notes.

The growing import of immigrant workers is reflected in Higgins' class. Among 21 students in class that day, 17 were immigrants from a range of countries: Mexico, India, Guatemala, Egypt, Honduras, Indonesia, Cuba, Congo, Ukraine and the tiny West African nation of Burkina Faso.
One of them was Maria Reyes, 30, a Guatemala native who signed up for the program through her church. Reyes, who came to Los Angeles at age 5, graduated from high school and got pregnant at 18; she began working as a waitress to bring in money for her new family. Her minimum-wage job, however, was leading nowhere.

"I wanted to keep doing something better," Reyes said. "This way I'm helping my family and other people with needs too."


http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me ... 5567.story

How about just paying our doctors, scientist and tech industry workers what they are worth, instead of farming their jobs out to HB1s.

Dixie

Yep, agree with Dixie.

and...

The authors totally ignore the fact that at any given time, there are about 800-900k unemployed or underemployed IT/high-tech/engineers in the US.

Many of whom are 'mid-career' having a lot of experience, but are subject to rampant age discrimination (which, of course, is illegal) and other preconceptions about the validity and marketability of their skills and experiences.

The proponents here (and elsewhere) are arguing for treating people as disposable work units. ... which, IMHO, is only one small step away from slavery. Why can't corporate managers, directors and owner be given reciprocal treatment?

I agree with both.

Here's where I stand: let business pick up some of the tab for training the workforce.

Back in the late '80's and early '90's, there was a shortage of skilled labor for the industry I was in. So the company I worked for (very, very conservative! An international brokerage that has no money invested in subprime mortgages) started an internal university. You could sign up for classes, attend during your normal working hours, and get the skills you needed to follow your career path of choice.

I worked in Accounting, but knew that the real money was on the trading floor. So I studied that aspect of the business, and when an administrative position opened up, I was in! Best job I ever had.

People from the mail room ended up as traders, people from the reception desk ended up in IT services. The corporation gave us the tools to succeed, and we did. (They also paid for college educations outside of the campus, which helped the resume immensely.)

It was a glorious system.

We have to have a mix of business and education. 15 years ago, Zimbabwe had an amazing public educational system, but the grads had no place to work locally when they finished school.

Cut off the cheap labor and business will find a way to survive.

The managers are lining their pockets with the excess profits because the reduction in wages has not been passed on to the consummer.

Trickle down economics don't trickle down. The earnings are collecting at the top of the corporate ladder.

Dixie

Originally Posted by Dixie

The managers are lining their pockets with the excess profits because the reduction in wages has not been passed on to the consummer.

Trickle down economics don't trickle down. The earnings are collecting at the top of the corporate ladder.

Dixie

Trickle down economics would work if the Republicans played by the rules. Unfettered immigration is probably my biggest disappointment with the GOP.

Reagan and then a Republican majority under Clinton had us sitting in pretty good shape. They set up the perfect system, and it was finally succeeding in spite of the socialist entitlement system shoved on us. Fast food restaurants were offering double the minimum wage, plus signing bonuses. That's how it was supposed to work! A job shortage would encourage people to get off welfare. It would encourage employers to provide things like health insurance and child care...anything to get our warm bodies behind their counters.

Instead, the Republicans turned a blind eye to the borders and let their cronies earn obscenely record profits on the backs of the middle class.

The article blames the aging baby boomers but does not mention the middle class flight out of California either, nor does it mention the doctors, and other highly skilled professionals that are leaving as well. Socialism brought this to them and until they realize that it is their thinking that got them here, the problem will not be solved. Not solved in California and not solved anywhere else.

Problem is who in their right mind would move to Cali right now. Its a total mess. It used to be so nice, but the last time I went there my extended cousins make twice as much money as me but live in twice as small of a place and in a seedy neighborhood. California needs someone besides an actor playing the role of a govenor.

Industrial Areas Foundation, a leadership development organization.

.....or, in layman's terms, another front group for the Communist Party, USA. This group has also sponsored something called the Metropolitan Alliance for the Common Good----well, almost everyone except whites, Christians and most males.

I don't disagree that retiring baby boomers could cause a shortage of labor. HOWEVER, there are millions of highly educated, professional quality people in Eastern Europe that would like to go where the opportunities are better. And no need to bring them up to cultural speed from some Third World mudhole.

With baby boomers preparing to retire as the best educated and most skilled workforce in U.S. history, a growing chorus of demographers and labor experts is raising concerns that workers in California and the nation lack the critical skills needed to replace them.

Like generations before them, the baby boomers had children who are educated and skilled for a replacement work force. Articles such as this give the impression that a complete void exists after the baby boomers generation.

In particular, experts say, the immigrant workers needed to fill many of the boomer jobs lack the English-language skills and basic educational levels to do so. Many immigrants are ill-equipped to fill California's fastest-growing positions, including computer software engineers, registered nurses and customer service representatives, a new study by the Washington-based Migration Policy Institute found.

Stop illiterate and/or illegal immigrants from entering our country.

In 1902 one of the questions asked of immigrants entering Ellis Island was: can you read and write?