At the Fabtech 2009 trade show last week, one of the organizers unveiled a national poll of 500 teens showing more than half want nothing to do with a career in manufacturing.
Manufacturing employment has collapsed over the past decade, to a much greater extent than during the Rust Belt crisis that got so much attention years ago.
Between 1980 and 1989, America lost 1.4 million manufacturing jobs, or 7.3 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Between 2000 and last month, 5.6 million jobs went away, a devastating one-third of the total.
What teenager would aspire to become one of those statistics?
America is losing the know-how required for innovation and may never get it back, "A manufacturing base is very hard to rebuild."
What do Teens aspire to become? From JA, Engineer," "Science" and "Doctor" top the list.
hhttp://www.ja.org/files/polls/kids_careers_2009.pdf
Coming from a family of owners of private business, I remember it was considered equal to a death sentence to work for someone else. These family members worked hard and long hours and it was unthinkable to join the line of people looking for work.
This generation where teens during the Great Depression. Starting a business was their life line to recover from the depression and they never credited the government for their success.
One uncle used the GI Bill to start his own business. My father before him used his education and wits to acquire a loan to start his business, both of them neither looked back or even consider changing coarse.
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