We are on our second or third generation of telling our kids the MUST go to college. The kids sit in front of their video games, head off to college, get a degree, expecting to sit in a cubicle making $40,000/year. We've lost our trades. I work with a number of contractors and they simply cannot find help. You can't find a young person who can cut blue tops with a motor grader. The younger generation can't cut grade with a dozer or put pipe together. Heck! Most youngsters today can't even change a flat tire!!!! So...
The manual labor jobs are being taken over by the immigrants from Mexico. Concrete finishers, pipe layers, carpenters, roofers, block masons.... I'm too old to learn to speak Spanish, but that's what most of my contractors speak. These workers earn good money for hard work... hard work that few of our own kids will do.
As I've stated before, not one of our three children went to college out of high school. One did attain her degree through night school AFTER she was married. One has been employed by a University's alumni association for 18 years and in a managemente position. One is a corporate executive, serving as Director of Risk Management and Contract Administration for a firm employing over 2,000 people. The third is a highly decorated NCO in the Army, currently assigned to a Special Forces Group. All three are still in their first marriage. But, these kids were raised with a work ethic that has allowed them to do well in competitive work environments.
We MUST get back to instilling work ethic in our youth and exciting more of them about careers in industry and construction. If not, we will continue to see opportunites shrink as more and more excellent career paths are taken by immigrants... simply because we are too lazy to pursue them.