1. As truck drivers age, few want to replace them, according to this article. Government regulation of CDL licensing could partly be to blame. Another obvious factor, which was confirmed by a guy I work with who sometimes drives trucks, is that the job really, really sucks. Economist Mark Thoma cited the article and asked why wages for truck drivers haven’t kept pace with the demand for workers. Immigration might have something to do with it.
2. Readers here are probably chomping at the bit, ready for this movie to come out:
3. Victor Davis Hanson implies that in his amnesty initiative, Obama assumes that more people would be invigorated by the idea of granting amnesty to 800,000 illegals than would be turned off by his circumvention of the other branches of the government and the economic impacts of the policy. Hanson seems to be suggesting that this might backfire on Obama. Sadly, I don’t think it will.
4.At AEI, James Pethokoukis cites a 2005 study which found that states that grant a higher number of work visas experience increases in native employment. The cited study found that for every 100 H-2B worker (less skilled non-ag workers), US natives gained an additional 464 jobs. This doesn’t pass the sniff test.
5.The cost of having a kid has increased by $40,000 in constant dollars between 1960 and 2010. While food, clothing, and housing costs have declined as a share of the total pie, child care costs have increased dramatically.
I think Hanson is right. I think Obama’s backdoor amnesty for illegals more or less in the unpassed Dream Act category will backfire. It will gain Obama a tad more Hispanic support than he’d have anyway, but I think a good lot less white independent voter support, who are the single largest voting block. It’s called the Sailer Strategy. Increase the support of white voters while not caring much about losing NAM support. Esp. in tough times, and increasing over time, whites are just ignoring the MSM in having to go all noblesse oblige towards NAMs. Particularly illegal ones.
As for it not being the illegal immigrants’ fault that their parents brought them here illegally when they were minors, ok, but why should the benefit from their parent’s unauthorized actions?
Doesn’t pass the sniff test indeed. If the multiplier of H1Bs was 4.5 as claimed, then granting around 8 million of them would eliminate unemployment. Does anyone seriously believe this? This kind of logic is inherent to discussions of multiplier effects, but no one ever seems to bring it up.
As for Obama, I don’t think he will gain much among Hispanics. Those Hispanics that care enough about immigration to make it a driving issue are already voting Obama. But he won’t face any backlash, because a backlash would take work and, alas, this is America we are talking about.
That article about truck driver shortages saddens me. I’m sure it’s a tough job, but I can think of a million worse jobs out there. There’s always been a certain freedom and romanticism to truck driving, which isn’t the case for most blue-collar jobs.
I’ve been consistently let down by Pethokoukis’ blog posts. It seems much more clearly the case that 464 natives gained jobs while 100 H-2B workers gained jobs. There’s no solid way to prove the causality of this. As Matt wrote, just import a whole bunch of poor migrant workers and everyone will then have jobs. And better yet, if that stat is what they’re reporting it to be, we should scrap all H-1B visa discussion and just higher lesser-skilled workers. They provide more jobs anyway, under this intuition.
A former roommate is now a trucker, doing a relatively short route and doesn’t seem to mind the job. He got his start by driving a street sweeper for a local company when he replied to an ad in the Pennysaver, and moved on from there via his connections within that company. The problem I see with a lot of these employment shortage examples is that it isn’t just difficult for the employers but for the jobseeker to actually contact them.
For my friend he had to pick up a paper publication and call a telephone number and then physically network with people face to face. This antiquated method of ‘knowing a guy’ isn’t any way to actually search for labor, nor is taking out a $50 dollar ad to run in a local paper only read by old women a few times a week. I got jobs out of those ads as well when I was a teenager. That is when my grandmother would clip them for me.
These companies need to actually put some effort and a share of their profit in searching for talent, which isn’t something that any of them expect to have to do. I commit a certain amount of my off the clock week to looking for better jobs, but there is an entire field, mostly the blue collar field, that is completely absent from my search. These are apparently all the industries hurting for labor, or at least that is what I keep reading yet I can’t seem to ever find any of them looking for employees.
As I was stuck in traffic last week due to road work, I opined to my passenger that I wouldn’t even know where to begin to look for a job as roadcrew. Where do these guys get there jobs? They probably just knew a guy. My cousin worked long hours at a decent wage before he went to college doing work clearing trees. He knew a guy. To apply otherwise you’d have to physically walk into their office building buried deep in a business park to hand deliver a resume. That isn’t going to work in today’s world as a reliable method of finding employees. The idea that potential employees have to compete for a job is true, but it’s also true that employers have to compete with each other for the same pool of labor and that is something that none of them want to accept.
It’s not plausible that earning a middle class wage as a truck driver is such a worse job that all of these 20-something men that I see working retail in department stores and the mall aren’t willing to do them instead of their nights and weekends for near minimum wage part-time jobs. Chances are good that they didn’t even apply to be a truck driver because they don’t know where or how to apply.
Black people are, as usual, wrong and stupid. There is no “Dear Black People” and they have no idea what we really think about them, or why. But I’m running with it.
My next door neighbor has a Masters degree in computer engineering. He couldn’t find an engineering-related job (or any white collar, mid-income job) upon getting out of the military after serving ten years. (I suspect that he did not have much relevant experience nor a quality degree from a reputable school.) He ended up going to a 6-week truck driving school and started work right after finishing. He’s been home twice, each time for just 24 hours, in the past three months. I’ve been using his pool every night after work and all weekend!
The amnesty would have a chance of backfiring on Obama if the Republican candidate attacked him with no apology or by relying on right-liberal arguments, articulating the national question with an alpha frame. Will Romney do a McCain though?
Even of the GOP candidate goes for the jugular though, will the public overcome media’s liberal narrative? I don’t think the alt-right revolution is there yet.
Yahoo News says Obama’s EO is a “big hit” with independents who are likely to vote. I’d like to see how the question actually read before I’d believe that. Anyway, the policy may be intended as a political “bank shot” as much as anything else. Educated women make up a core constictuency of Obama’s and have grown addicted to having cheap, docile manids and gardeners. This allows that particular group of voters to keep their cheap household help, while congratulating themselves on how inclusive and culturally sensitive they are.
I’m getting my CDL right now and my instructor says the classes have shrunk in my state due to scholarships not paying for most of the tuition like they used to (its only an 8 week course compared to a full semester).
Truckers don’t make as much as they used to due to the Federal regulations (they force you to stop and take a 10 hour break every 11 hours and 2 days off every week) so now Truckers can’t run all the time like they used to. Trucking is much safer though.
I think with all the old timers getting retiring, I’d like to think that wages will rise, but the truth is that small trucking companies will get swallowed by the larger companies and they will have a monopoly on the trucking industry.
Still, I think money is there to be made with a CDL. Wages might yet go up to meet demands for drivers. That is my hope at least.
Owner/Operators make more (I know a 3rd year driver who is making payments on his truck and made 80 grand last year). Drivers in the Gas and Oil industry make more.
“I think with all the old timers getting retiring, I’d like to think that wages will rise, but the truth is that small trucking companies will get swallowed by the larger companies and they will have a monopoly on the trucking industry.”
You’re probably right. I worked at a law firm last year who handled mostly truck wreck cases (as defense counsel) and I had to do a lot of research on the trucking industry. The average age of a trucker is around 54 or 55 so there is definitely a demographic shortage coming up the pipeline.
Also, from what I understand signing bonuses and high 50K salaries are common for even new drivers.
Exactly what was the point of that ‘Dear White People’ clip?
If anything, blacks should be more worried about how Hispanics outnumber them, and even Asians are now half their numbers, and routinely demonstrate that America is not racist in terms of suppressing the economic potential of nonwhites.
The black victimology scam is getting harder and harder to continue…and not because of whites.
It is hard to say whether Pethokoukis is right or wrong.
Any multiplier for H1-Bs has to assume that they are evenly distributed across industries and geographies. They are not – they are concentrated in very few industries and geographies (software in Silicon Valley, for example).
What Chuck may not see, however, is that point 2) and point 4) are actually related (and even point 3)). H1-Bs are bad for blacks because the Asians who come over on those tend to be highly visible proof that white Americans are not overtly oppressing non-whites.
That is why Obama wants more illegals to have amnesty, but not more H1-Bs, since the latter would cost him more in terms of weakening the narrative of black oppression, while the former does not do that (it arguably creates a new, incremental victim group).
One thing obviously wrong about Pethokoukis’ quotes is that he says H2 (unskilled) attracts more than H1 (skilled).
Whether we believe in the multiplier at all, surely skilled immigrants would create more native jobs than unskilled. For one thing, they pay higher taxes, and buy homes and cars.
How can unskilled have a higher multiplier than skilled??
Most black Americans are not skilled workers, so to concern themselves with skilled immigrants is a waste of their time. Americans, in general, don’t seem to have much loyalty to one and other. I think it takes shared hardship in order for that to develop, and as of yet, we haven’t had it.
I’d like to know how that study came up with immigrants creating jobs for us. It looks more like immigrants replacing us from what I can see.
1000 immigrants were brought in to replace 1000 native workers, and less than half of them found new jobs, therefore ~400 jobs were ‘created’ by immigration. That is actually what they believe.
AEI study: This is bunkus. There’s just no way this can be true.
The cause and effect and correlation are confused here.
I think Hanson is right. I think Obama’s backdoor amnesty for illegals more or less in the unpassed Dream Act category will backfire. It will gain Obama a tad more Hispanic support than he’d have anyway, but I think a good lot less white independent voter support, who are the single largest voting block. It’s called the Sailer Strategy. Increase the support of white voters while not caring much about losing NAM support. Esp. in tough times, and increasing over time, whites are just ignoring the MSM in having to go all noblesse oblige towards NAMs. Particularly illegal ones.
As for it not being the illegal immigrants’ fault that their parents brought them here illegally when they were minors, ok, but why should the benefit from their parent’s unauthorized actions?
Toughen up America.
forgot follow up check mark.
The movie bodes well for race relations and diversity. Two thumbs up.
Doesn’t pass the sniff test indeed. If the multiplier of H1Bs was 4.5 as claimed, then granting around 8 million of them would eliminate unemployment. Does anyone seriously believe this? This kind of logic is inherent to discussions of multiplier effects, but no one ever seems to bring it up.
As for Obama, I don’t think he will gain much among Hispanics. Those Hispanics that care enough about immigration to make it a driving issue are already voting Obama. But he won’t face any backlash, because a backlash would take work and, alas, this is America we are talking about.
That article about truck driver shortages saddens me. I’m sure it’s a tough job, but I can think of a million worse jobs out there. There’s always been a certain freedom and romanticism to truck driving, which isn’t the case for most blue-collar jobs.
I’ve been consistently let down by Pethokoukis’ blog posts. It seems much more clearly the case that 464 natives gained jobs while 100 H-2B workers gained jobs. There’s no solid way to prove the causality of this. As Matt wrote, just import a whole bunch of poor migrant workers and everyone will then have jobs. And better yet, if that stat is what they’re reporting it to be, we should scrap all H-1B visa discussion and just higher lesser-skilled workers. They provide more jobs anyway, under this intuition.
A former roommate is now a trucker, doing a relatively short route and doesn’t seem to mind the job. He got his start by driving a street sweeper for a local company when he replied to an ad in the Pennysaver, and moved on from there via his connections within that company. The problem I see with a lot of these employment shortage examples is that it isn’t just difficult for the employers but for the jobseeker to actually contact them.
For my friend he had to pick up a paper publication and call a telephone number and then physically network with people face to face. This antiquated method of ‘knowing a guy’ isn’t any way to actually search for labor, nor is taking out a $50 dollar ad to run in a local paper only read by old women a few times a week. I got jobs out of those ads as well when I was a teenager. That is when my grandmother would clip them for me.
These companies need to actually put some effort and a share of their profit in searching for talent, which isn’t something that any of them expect to have to do. I commit a certain amount of my off the clock week to looking for better jobs, but there is an entire field, mostly the blue collar field, that is completely absent from my search. These are apparently all the industries hurting for labor, or at least that is what I keep reading yet I can’t seem to ever find any of them looking for employees.
As I was stuck in traffic last week due to road work, I opined to my passenger that I wouldn’t even know where to begin to look for a job as roadcrew. Where do these guys get there jobs? They probably just knew a guy. My cousin worked long hours at a decent wage before he went to college doing work clearing trees. He knew a guy. To apply otherwise you’d have to physically walk into their office building buried deep in a business park to hand deliver a resume. That isn’t going to work in today’s world as a reliable method of finding employees. The idea that potential employees have to compete for a job is true, but it’s also true that employers have to compete with each other for the same pool of labor and that is something that none of them want to accept.
It’s not plausible that earning a middle class wage as a truck driver is such a worse job that all of these 20-something men that I see working retail in department stores and the mall aren’t willing to do them instead of their nights and weekends for near minimum wage part-time jobs. Chances are good that they didn’t even apply to be a truck driver because they don’t know where or how to apply.
Black people are, as usual, wrong and stupid. There is no “Dear Black People” and they have no idea what we really think about them, or why. But I’m running with it.
that mpvie looks awesome finally a movie that at least touches on white privelege and white supremcy
Obama just won hisself the erection with his brilliant compassionate move.
My next door neighbor has a Masters degree in computer engineering. He couldn’t find an engineering-related job (or any white collar, mid-income job) upon getting out of the military after serving ten years. (I suspect that he did not have much relevant experience nor a quality degree from a reputable school.) He ended up going to a 6-week truck driving school and started work right after finishing. He’s been home twice, each time for just 24 hours, in the past three months. I’ve been using his pool every night after work and all weekend!
The amnesty would have a chance of backfiring on Obama if the Republican candidate attacked him with no apology or by relying on right-liberal arguments, articulating the national question with an alpha frame. Will Romney do a McCain though?
Even of the GOP candidate goes for the jugular though, will the public overcome media’s liberal narrative? I don’t think the alt-right revolution is there yet.
AND WITHOUT relying on right-liberal arguments
Yahoo News says Obama’s EO is a “big hit” with independents who are likely to vote. I’d like to see how the question actually read before I’d believe that. Anyway, the policy may be intended as a political “bank shot” as much as anything else. Educated women make up a core constictuency of Obama’s and have grown addicted to having cheap, docile manids and gardeners. This allows that particular group of voters to keep their cheap household help, while congratulating themselves on how inclusive and culturally sensitive they are.
I’m getting my CDL right now and my instructor says the classes have shrunk in my state due to scholarships not paying for most of the tuition like they used to (its only an 8 week course compared to a full semester).
Truckers don’t make as much as they used to due to the Federal regulations (they force you to stop and take a 10 hour break every 11 hours and 2 days off every week) so now Truckers can’t run all the time like they used to. Trucking is much safer though.
I think with all the old timers getting retiring, I’d like to think that wages will rise, but the truth is that small trucking companies will get swallowed by the larger companies and they will have a monopoly on the trucking industry.
Still, I think money is there to be made with a CDL. Wages might yet go up to meet demands for drivers. That is my hope at least.
Owner/Operators make more (I know a 3rd year driver who is making payments on his truck and made 80 grand last year). Drivers in the Gas and Oil industry make more.
“I think with all the old timers getting retiring, I’d like to think that wages will rise, but the truth is that small trucking companies will get swallowed by the larger companies and they will have a monopoly on the trucking industry.”
You’re probably right. I worked at a law firm last year who handled mostly truck wreck cases (as defense counsel) and I had to do a lot of research on the trucking industry. The average age of a trucker is around 54 or 55 so there is definitely a demographic shortage coming up the pipeline.
Also, from what I understand signing bonuses and high 50K salaries are common for even new drivers.
Exactly what was the point of that ‘Dear White People’ clip?
If anything, blacks should be more worried about how Hispanics outnumber them, and even Asians are now half their numbers, and routinely demonstrate that America is not racist in terms of suppressing the economic potential of nonwhites.
The black victimology scam is getting harder and harder to continue…and not because of whites.
Some of the black people in that clip look to be 50% of more white, genetically. Particularly the girl in the front…
It is hard to say whether Pethokoukis is right or wrong.
Any multiplier for H1-Bs has to assume that they are evenly distributed across industries and geographies. They are not – they are concentrated in very few industries and geographies (software in Silicon Valley, for example).
What Chuck may not see, however, is that point 2) and point 4) are actually related (and even point 3)). H1-Bs are bad for blacks because the Asians who come over on those tend to be highly visible proof that white Americans are not overtly oppressing non-whites.
That is why Obama wants more illegals to have amnesty, but not more H1-Bs, since the latter would cost him more in terms of weakening the narrative of black oppression, while the former does not do that (it arguably creates a new, incremental victim group).
One thing obviously wrong about Pethokoukis’ quotes is that he says H2 (unskilled) attracts more than H1 (skilled).
Whether we believe in the multiplier at all, surely skilled immigrants would create more native jobs than unskilled. For one thing, they pay higher taxes, and buy homes and cars.
How can unskilled have a higher multiplier than skilled??
Heh. Most Obama voters are firm believers on their God-given authority to tell the “peasants” (read: Southerners) how to live their lives.
Youth don’t even want to drive sedans anymore, so why would we expect them to become truck drivers?
http://www.good.is/post/young-people-are-driving-less-and-not-just-because-they-re-broke/
Most black Americans are not skilled workers, so to concern themselves with skilled immigrants is a waste of their time. Americans, in general, don’t seem to have much loyalty to one and other. I think it takes shared hardship in order for that to develop, and as of yet, we haven’t had it.
I’d like to know how that study came up with immigrants creating jobs for us. It looks more like immigrants replacing us from what I can see.
1000 immigrants were brought in to replace 1000 native workers, and less than half of them found new jobs, therefore ~400 jobs were ‘created’ by immigration. That is actually what they believe.