re: Apparently, there are now more job vacancies than unemployed people - do you believe this?

When you work with less educated, manual labor workers, you're gonna get that. They do drugs. They get drunk. They make excuses for being late or missing work. It's the nature of the beast.

I've dealt with it, and know that you just have to factor that into your business plan. Always have other guys on the back burner.

For skilled labor, there are people willing to work, but employers with unrealistic qualifications for the pay, and also unwilling to invest the time/money to train

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The huge failure of the department of education, was that for it's existence it's pushed a "college track" curriculum.
Long ago separate trade high schools should have been established.

Fabricators, welders, ac repair, auto mechanics, electronics repair. A lot of recession proof jobs. Yet all need long training.

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This has been recently changing. Our district has had a huge focus for about 4 years for College and Career Readiness Program. The systems are in place assuming that the Boards of Ed care enough to proceed with the direction.

I can give more details if anyone is interested.

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They do drugs. They get drunk. They make excuses for being late or missing work. It's the nature of the beast.

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Do you attribute The aforementioned things to be the reason why blue collar work is stigmatized?

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$15 per hour - or more.

There is no excuse for not having a $15 per hour minimum wage.

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Minimum wage jobs are not designed to be "living wage" jobs. These are entry level positions, part time positions, and temporary work for students and other young people just entering the work force.

Anyone who aspires to raise a family on a McDonald's fry cook salary has no business procreating. They clearly have no common sense or grasp of reality.

One of the problems is that kids don't work anymore. I started my first job at 15 working at the Space Shuttle arcade at the front of Biltmore in Central over the summer. I knew it was a job to make some summer money, and only that. I had zero expectations of making a living working there. By the way, to show my age, minimum wage was $3.35/hour. When school started, I quit and went back to highschool. That pattern continued until I got a license and a car, then I got an after school job.

I repeated this all the way through college. School, work, study, sleep, repeat. As I gained work experience and skills, my wage increased. But I still knew these jobs weren't careers. They were part of me growing as a person, learning how to be an employee, learning how to budget, and making gas and beer money.

Nowadays kids just go to school, after school activities like sports, dance, gymnastics, whatever, all the way through college. With mom and dad paying the way, or junior racking up a mountain of student loan debt.

Then they step out in to the workforce as a college graduate, with zero experience. And expect to get a 6 figure job.

Then there's the other model. Stumble through highschool barely passing, doing nothing after school but fricking off and getting high. Graduate from high school or get a GED, then pull your head off the bong or the XBOX and realize you need money. So, you get the only job your qualified for, a minimum wage one, and think, OK, I'm set. Time to get to living. Even worse, you get knocked up or knock someone up and think, yeah, this Starbucks barista job will allow me to raise a family.

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Do you attribute The aforementioned things to be the reason why blue collar work is stigmatized?

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No. Blue collar work is stigmatized by newly arrived upper middle class people who are still insecure. Mainly young people who never have had to engage in actual hard work and don't understand the value of it.

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“Manufacturing jobs aren’t coming back”...O

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Manufacturing is a shell of itself from it's peak