July 6, 2010--With Cousins
Everyone had finished their entrées and while waiting for the waitress to bring out the birthday cake, those of us gathered to celebrate my mother’s 102nd birthday swapped seats so that we could better catch up with each other. It had been some time since the extended family had gathered in this way. Not since the year before.
Young cousins who had been down at the other end of the table moved closer to me to make it easier to talk quietly. One had traveled to Florida from the west coast and was telling us about his son who had just completed his junior year in college. Another of the cousins had recently taken a new job and was feeling optimistic, in spite of the economic hard times, about making a go of it.
Just the sorts of things one wanted to hear on this remarkable occasion—the family matriarch doing so well at such an advanced age while the next generations were successfully making their way in the world.
The conversation at my end of the long table shifted from the personal to the larger world. Both cousins have had considerable experience working for some of the world’s largest technology firms. I asked how things were. I had read that one where the west-coast cousin was working had announced further layoffs.
“Someone there said,” he said, “that producing unemployment is now our core business. And I am only half joking. It’s pretty awful. I’m still OK but it’s hard to be in an environment where so many of your colleagues are facing dismissal and little likelihood of any time soon being hired somewhere else.”
“I can only imagine,” I said, “but I am glad to know you’re feeling reasonably secure. What’s happening? I mean more broadly. Are there any signs of the economy freshening?”
My other cousin said, “Down here in Florida things are even worse. Everything derives from real estate. If that is slumping, and things now are much worse than just slumping, everything suffers. Even in the high-tech sector. In my last job of that kind every day more and more cubicles were empty.”
“I don’t have your experience to draw from,” I said, “but I do know about education and it seems to me that unless we do a better job of educating the next generation, our country will be relegated to second-class status.”
“That’s necessary but insufficient,” my west-coast cousin said, and my other cousin nodded in agreement. “I know you’ve heard it a million times by now, but I have to tell you that all this outsourcing is killing us.”
“But,” I asked, “aren’t the Microsofts and IBMs outsourcing their high-end development work because they can’t find enough Americans who are capable of doing this kind of innovative work? Didn’t I read somewhere that whereas in the past the vast majority of patents issues were to Americans, now the percentages are shifting more to Asian countries?”
“I’m not sure about that but what I do know is that if the CEO of my company can save five cents by farming a job out to India he’ll do it in a nano-second. He’s a numbers guy, not an innovator or entrepreneur type and to him it’s all about the bottom line. And this is slowly killing the company. This is not a sound long-term strategy for a business of this kind nor is a philosophy of buying up other innovative companies.”
“So, you’re telling me that it’s not a matter of there not any longer being enough well-educated, enterprising Americans? That it’s all about doing things cheaper?”
“That’s what I’m telling you.”
“And that’s also what I’m telling you,” my Florida cousin added.
“If my company feels we need to hire, say, software engineers, we don’t have to look for them in China or India. There are thousands who have been laid off the past few years right here in America who are desperate to find work. So, it’s not just about education. Though I’m sure we both agree that we also need to do better at that.”
And with that the cake arrived, ablaze with candles. My mother made a wish and, with no help needed, blew them all out.
A day later, back in New York, the lead story on the front page of the New York Times had the following headline—“Jobs Go Begging As Gap Is exposed In Worker Skills.” (Full article linked below.)
It was a story about manufacturing job—good, high-paying ones, not the kind that get farmed out to places such as Indonesia or Honduras. True, lower-end manufacturing jobs are all either overseas or headed there; but it also appears that there are a growing number of new kinds of manufacturing jobs in new industries such as the fabrication of wind turbines and advanced medical devices that companies see advantages to keeping here.
But they are having trouble finding people from the currently two million laid off factory workers capable of operating complex computerized machinery or following sophisticated blueprints or who have the level of math skills required to get the job done.
The CEO of BioEnterprise, a non-profit organization seeking to turn central Ohio into a center for medical innovation, said, “That’s where you’re seeing the pain point. The people who are out of work just don’t match the types of jobs that are here, open, and growing.”
As I would put it, they don’t have the education required for work in the only kind of 21st century manufacturing now viable in the United States.
I am sure my cousins are right about what they said. There is no contradiction there. But as many who understand these things claim, unless we in America also make things—not just provide services and create financial instruments of ultimately dubious value--our economy cannot thrive.
Young cousins who had been down at the other end of the table moved closer to me to make it easier to talk quietly. One had traveled to Florida from the west coast and was telling us about his son who had just completed his junior year in college. Another of the cousins had recently taken a new job and was feeling optimistic, in spite of the economic hard times, about making a go of it.
Just the sorts of things one wanted to hear on this remarkable occasion—the family matriarch doing so well at such an advanced age while the next generations were successfully making their way in the world.
The conversation at my end of the long table shifted from the personal to the larger world. Both cousins have had considerable experience working for some of the world’s largest technology firms. I asked how things were. I had read that one where the west-coast cousin was working had announced further layoffs.
“Someone there said,” he said, “that producing unemployment is now our core business. And I am only half joking. It’s pretty awful. I’m still OK but it’s hard to be in an environment where so many of your colleagues are facing dismissal and little likelihood of any time soon being hired somewhere else.”
“I can only imagine,” I said, “but I am glad to know you’re feeling reasonably secure. What’s happening? I mean more broadly. Are there any signs of the economy freshening?”
My other cousin said, “Down here in Florida things are even worse. Everything derives from real estate. If that is slumping, and things now are much worse than just slumping, everything suffers. Even in the high-tech sector. In my last job of that kind every day more and more cubicles were empty.”
“I don’t have your experience to draw from,” I said, “but I do know about education and it seems to me that unless we do a better job of educating the next generation, our country will be relegated to second-class status.”
“That’s necessary but insufficient,” my west-coast cousin said, and my other cousin nodded in agreement. “I know you’ve heard it a million times by now, but I have to tell you that all this outsourcing is killing us.”
“But,” I asked, “aren’t the Microsofts and IBMs outsourcing their high-end development work because they can’t find enough Americans who are capable of doing this kind of innovative work? Didn’t I read somewhere that whereas in the past the vast majority of patents issues were to Americans, now the percentages are shifting more to Asian countries?”
“I’m not sure about that but what I do know is that if the CEO of my company can save five cents by farming a job out to India he’ll do it in a nano-second. He’s a numbers guy, not an innovator or entrepreneur type and to him it’s all about the bottom line. And this is slowly killing the company. This is not a sound long-term strategy for a business of this kind nor is a philosophy of buying up other innovative companies.”
“So, you’re telling me that it’s not a matter of there not any longer being enough well-educated, enterprising Americans? That it’s all about doing things cheaper?”
“That’s what I’m telling you.”
“And that’s also what I’m telling you,” my Florida cousin added.
“If my company feels we need to hire, say, software engineers, we don’t have to look for them in China or India. There are thousands who have been laid off the past few years right here in America who are desperate to find work. So, it’s not just about education. Though I’m sure we both agree that we also need to do better at that.”
And with that the cake arrived, ablaze with candles. My mother made a wish and, with no help needed, blew them all out.
A day later, back in New York, the lead story on the front page of the New York Times had the following headline—“Jobs Go Begging As Gap Is exposed In Worker Skills.” (Full article linked below.)
It was a story about manufacturing job—good, high-paying ones, not the kind that get farmed out to places such as Indonesia or Honduras. True, lower-end manufacturing jobs are all either overseas or headed there; but it also appears that there are a growing number of new kinds of manufacturing jobs in new industries such as the fabrication of wind turbines and advanced medical devices that companies see advantages to keeping here.
But they are having trouble finding people from the currently two million laid off factory workers capable of operating complex computerized machinery or following sophisticated blueprints or who have the level of math skills required to get the job done.
The CEO of BioEnterprise, a non-profit organization seeking to turn central Ohio into a center for medical innovation, said, “That’s where you’re seeing the pain point. The people who are out of work just don’t match the types of jobs that are here, open, and growing.”
As I would put it, they don’t have the education required for work in the only kind of 21st century manufacturing now viable in the United States.
I am sure my cousins are right about what they said. There is no contradiction there. But as many who understand these things claim, unless we in America also make things—not just provide services and create financial instruments of ultimately dubious value--our economy cannot thrive.
posted by Steven Zwerling at
4:28 AM
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