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Comment by kaitai

In many states the employment market is so tight that jobs are going unfilled. This is especially true in blue-collar jobs that require interfacing with computers and advanced machinery. In many areas with higher unemployment rate, employers still complain they can't find anyone who can pass a drug test.

We do have a mismatch -- lots of employers simply aren't yet paying enough to get employees. And agricultural employers can't get any Americans, white or not white, to work for them, in part because the seasonality of the jobs and lack of health insurance makes the pay immaterial. If you work for 6 weeks you could lose eligibility for some benefits, and what are you going to do for the other 46 weeks in the year? Providing benefits not tied to employment would mitigate this problem. But it still wouldn't solve the problem of all the Americans not even looking for work because they're out on disability. These people, again, are not competing with immigrant labor, because by and large they really can't do any sort of physical labor.

There is really no competition for ag jobs. Americans really, really don't want to do them, for some rational economic reasons and some reasons of expectations/feelings about what they deserve.

parent kaitai 8 years ago

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