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Comment by _cbsz | Hacker News Reader

I feel like I've seen a lot of articles about people who can't find jobs or who are worried about their increasingly-outdated jobs going away in the short term. This article says we also have a lot of jobs that can't find people. What's the missing piece? Re-training? What does that actually look like for a 30- or 40-year-old person who has a family to support and doesn't much care for government handouts?

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I'm hypothesizing, but I imagine a lot of it has to do with geographical mismatch. How many auto-glass installers do you need in Elkhart, Indiana [1]? Or Casper, Wyoming, or Lafayette, Louisiana?

EDIT: to expand on my point, in metropolitan areas that are experiencing a population boom, demand creates opportunities for businesses, and therefore opportunities for prospective workers. It's a virtuous cycle. Meanwhile, a large employer's departure in established areas will leave behind skilled talent, but some of those people will depart and disperse, making the area less attractive for new job creation in related fields.

[1] https://www.bls.gov/news.release/metro.nr0.htm

Funny you mention Elkhart because I live right next door.

Their main industry is RV manufacture. When the economy is rocking, RV sales go up, the Elkhart has a big lack of workers. When the economy is rubbish, they all get laid off and move elsewhere.

The metro area here has over 550,000 people. Not New York City, bit big enough that there SHOULD be enough glass installers, or at least a pool to train enough glass installers form.

I'd think more in WY or IN due to snow plowing and freeze/thaw cycles.

I lived in indiana the first 30+ years, and live in Norway now. I've never heard of car glass breaking because of the freeze/thaw cycle.

More common, it is things like hail during thunderstorms or gravel from a road.

It is the water getting into chips and micro-cracks in the glass. Not instantly breaking, but growing into cracks over the years from freeze thaw cycles.

It's speculation, but my take would be that there are two missing pieces:

1) Inadequate pay.

2) Unwillingness to train.

If you don't have the exact skills that the company wants, they won't hire you. But they will complain that they can't find anyone even though they are really only offering unskilled level wages.

And location.

If you're 30/40, odds are you have a family, roots somewhere, and maybe a mortgage. Your ability/willingness to move - especially after being out of work for a while - is near zero.

* I'm late 30s with all of the above.

> If you're 30/40, odds are you have a family, roots somewhere, and maybe a mortgage. Your ability/willingness to move - especially after being out of work for a while - is near zero.

This is also true for someone like me as a recent grad with an older vehicle, a student loan to pay off, and lack of sufficient savings to move too far away from my hometown. One of the large issues of the education crisis that I don't hear being discussed is that a lot of students, like myself, often spend literally everything we have to get the degree after constantly hearing about success story after success story in the K-12 system. In these cases, it is implied that college is the only way to get ahead in life and we need to get there by any means necessary.

I mean, how the hell am I supposed to magically relocate halfway across the country (or even commute >50 miles away from my house on a daily basis) when the infrastructure doesn't exist and/or no benefits are offered besides "you should be glad that we're even paying you"?

But hey, I'm just a whiny millennial brat who should be glad that spanking/belt whipping is illegal.

One important thing to add to this, is that in the US, halfway across the country is somewhere around 2,000 miles, which can easily result in $2-3000 in moving costs alone. I just bring this up since I had a conversation about a very similar topic with a friend in the UK - where halfway across the country can mean a leisurely 4 hour drive.

1) is also connected to 2) - you can't effectively train yourself in a new field if you spend 8 (more likely 10-12) hours / day earning money just to feed yourself and your family.

$10/hour, no benefits.

4 years job experience and college degree required for entry-level job.

No training.

"We can't find anyone"

There is no missing piece, because the first part of your statement isn't backed by fact. There's not a big dark pool of people who can't find jobs. The second part of your first sentence is maybe true, but maybe not. In surveys of Americans most people feel positive about their economic circumstances, at every level of income. 75-80% of Americans report they feel their job is secure[1].

1: http://kff.org/report-section/kaiser-family-foundationcnn-wo...

Other than the 3% of all workers who have become permanently discouraged workers in the past decade, you mean?

http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000

It's only 5 million people or so, so I guess you're saying that's not "big".

Expand the graph back to 1948, where it starts, and you'll see labor participation is higher now than it was from 1948-1984. So it's not that simple, unfortunately.

Back then, 1 income could raise a family. The participation was not needed.

That process runs both ways. When the economy is doing better, labor participation can go down due to incomes going up. The grandparent pinned the qualitative judgement "permanently discouraged" upon this graph, but that's just one way to read it.

IME, they dont usually train older people. Would be applicants are steered towards private trade schools for training. There is no option for apprenticeships.

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