Can I be really honest with you?
Green jobs aren’t going to save our hide. (h/t PunkRockHR.com)
Let that sink in for a few moments.
Done? Good.
When politicians talk about job creation, anyone with staffing experience has to be completely cynical about that. It sounds so lucrative. The President is going to create a million jobs by whenever. They’ll be family wage jobs. They’ll be in areas where people need help. And we will get it done!
Crowds cheer! Flags wave! At the end of the day though, you’re going to actually have to align the skills of the workforce with the skills that are needed in a new economy. A person who operated a robot on an assembly line in Detroit isn’t going to benefit from an engineering job in Eastern Washington. An HR professional can’t start maintenance work on a solar cell plant in the California desert.
Dropping tax credits into green energy is fine but let’s just be frank about this: it ain’t for the good of the working man and woman.
So what do we do? Well, if the government has its heart set on spending its way out of this, we could at least think about some better uses for that money:
- Construction work is fine, permanent work is better – Never got the emphasis on creating some short term jobs. Yes, immediate impact is good but the short term nature isn’t. Too short sighted.
- Pump money into community and technical colleges – Student grants, student loans and funding programs that are actually proactive in addressing business needs. Give people a path to a new line of jobs.
- Allow easier entry into entrepreneurship – Microloans, training and free services are one way. Making it easier for entrepreneurs to buy into health plans is another.
- Pump money into established small businesses – Again, you want to talk about job creation, it can happen with greater ease at the small business level.
- Connect credits with job placement – Easiest way to do this is a payroll tax credit. It is as close to an immediate benefit as you’ll get and the connection with jobs makes sense.
The point is creating jobs for people that can’t fill them is frustrating. It is frustrating to people who are out pounding pavement and people who are looking to find qualified people for their jobs.
What do you think? How do we better align our labor force with new workforce requirements? How do we redistribute our industrial and population base to align with some geographically dispersed opportunities?
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
I’m loving the more frequent posts from a seemingly feistier @thelance!
Like you, I continue to wonder how all of the anticipated jobs creation related to new/improved infrastructure will be the long term solution to our economic troubles. True, we need many improvements and going “green” is all good. But to help our economy long term – we need people trained in the skills that businesses need today and in the future. We should be figuring out how to grow/build knowledge workers and creatives and you’ve made some good suggestions. Instead, we’re outsourcing work and bringing in talent from other countries to fill the gaps we have. Our situation certainly won’t change overnight, but we need to get started!
No, wait, I’m pretty sure that green jobs will solve everything — from oil dependence to the fact that my litter boxes are dirty.
Bring on green jobs. Yeah!
@Jennifer – Thanks! And I agree, we need more long term thinking. That’s one of the issues, too many politicians think term to term instead of long term.
@Laurie – Get your screwdriver ready. I am sending you out to work on a wind turbine.
Great article. Too bad our representatives in DC don’t bother to seek advise from people with experience in recruiting and hiring like yourself. Nothing wrong with green jobs. They will come but they will not, as you note, fix the current 10+% unemployment rate.
Most new jobs are created by small businesses. So tax breaks for small businesses and streamlined regulations for them are the most likely way to create new jobs. Favoring certain types of small businesses is usually counterproductive because businesses spend more time and effort qualifying for the government advantages than doing productive things that create jobs in the long run. And it discourages people from coming up with new ideas that the government can’t imagine in fields they don’t understand.
If the government is going to spend its way out of this, the biggest help it could provide is a de-linkage between employers and health care.
Want to make entrepreneurship easier to enter? Then make sure affordable, portable health care is part of what the government spends money on. Otherwise, people will be afraid that catastrophe will strike when they head out to follow their business dream.
Regarding green jobs: they are a class of job that will, in my opinion, add large net positive to our economy. As carbon intensive, mining-based energy jobs from around the world are replaced with carbon neutral infrastructure-based green energy in the US, the net benefit for working class Americans is very strong.