There Are Plenty of Jobs Out There

Generally, when certain people try to preach an end to any kind of safety net, they'll point to the HELP WANTED ads and say "there's plenty of jobs there. People don't want to work."

Their brains can't wrap around the fact that its not quite as cut-and-dried as it seems.

A friend who has been a hard worker all his life and never shied away from hard work is in his 60's.  In his late 50's he landed a job as a custodian in a local school district.  For him and his family, it was the perfect job.  They finally had benefits which were desperately needed.  At the school, the children loved him, the teachers loved him, the staff loved him.  There was not a single mark against him on his record.  Just shy of a decade of work there, he was let go with no explanation.

The explanation came later that summer before school began again, when his position was advertised in the local newspaper.  Only instead of one full-time worker with benefits, the position was now two part-time workers, no benefits.  It seems they have one person working in the position but have had a revolving door of second workers and the ad appeared in the newspaper yet again this morning.

But there are plenty of jobs out there.

This state doesn't have income or sales tax, which means the funding for just about everything comes from property taxes.  Still, compared to New York, where I came from, property taxes are inordinately low.  I can remember one YEAR when my taxes went up $600.  That is what some people are paying here a year, total.

But every year at school budget time, the complaints come in.  People don't want their taxes to go up and would, in fact, like them lowered.  We have a state of the art high school opened in 2007 that doesn't get funded as it should be.  Practical budgets are presented, then the board says "Well what would you do if we said to cut another $250,000?"  And the staff is cut.  And full-time positions become part-time.  And those positions remain unfilled.  $180 a week.  That's what that job pays.  For most people, that's not even a car payment.

That job would be a second job to the person who took it.  Which means they would have another job to schedule around.  Does their first job even have a set schedule?  I know that's the new "thing" with employers - to schedule employees as they need them to cut costs.  This makes it impossible to plan for a second job (or anything like doctor's appointments, but I digress).

But there are plenty of jobs out there.

That's always echoed by people who have jobs with decent pay, a set schedule, and (usually) benefits.  Funny how I don't hear the people who are trying to juggle life under these circumstances saying it.

Welcome to our brave new world.



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