- Credits:
- Pew Research Center: American’s On the Move
Helen’s Place LLC Update: August 14, 2022
People could learn something from birds adapting their flight patterns to fit environmental conditions. In comparison, it’s difficult to get humans to try anything different to solve problems.
Take for example the never-ending hype during election years about an invasion at the U.S. Mexico border. Even during the third year of the pandemic, the predictable pattern is likely to start up again before the 2022 midterms unless overcome by more salacious news. Some people are tired of being fearful.
It would be a refreshing change if the government got ahead of the news cycle this time to “boldly go” where it hasn’t gone before – like doing something constructive about the immigration situation.
Rhetoric about fixing the problems within other countries so people don’t try to enter the U.S, is not sufficient to stem the tide of network theatre.
Now is the time to propose what might be called the “American Jobs Initiative.” This initiative could be introduced by a person appearing by a modern radar screen to explain things in down to earth terms.
Someone like former Mayor Pete Buttigieg would be perfect for the role, because after all he’s the Secretary of Transportation now, and it’s his job to show leadership in logistics to get America moving!
While it’s not possible to get American’s to drop their biases overnight, If Reagan could use his 1983 star wars program, The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), to bring down the Soviet Union and end the Cold War, certainly, Mayor Pete could do a lot to calm the tensions of American’s thinking there’s an invasion of people at the border trying to steal their jobs.
He could easily emulate Reagan’s use of charts and graphs in a weekly address to showcase the American hot jobs list and featured top jobs of the week.
His talks would make relevant TV and be helpful to the American people. Mayor Pete could also converse about the use of USAjobs.gov for infrastructure jobs, and to highlight jobs where we have labor shortages.
Here’s the argument: If entrepreneurs like Richard Branson, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos could design spaceships and leave the earth with passengers in 2021, certainly the federal government could implement a labor market initiative in 2022 that gets the country moving.
It’s all about getting organized and managing employment logistics in America as a whole industry, not piecemeal and haphazardly.
The current method of discussing labor is worn out – like experts on T.V. droning on about how many jobs are going begging, vegetables rotting in the field, milk being thrown out and workers quitting in the “great resignation” era.
It’s time for a complete change and more interesting reporting format.
A televised, jobs birds-eye-view is the only way to gain people’s engagement in a united project!
Additionally, If the government has the proof for why we need immigrants, now’s the time to present the evidence about how their labor serves America.
Just saying, “we’re a nation of immigrants and this is who we are,” or “we’re better than this,” just isn’t sufficient anymore because millions of Americans don’t believe it.
The government must show how it’s going to ensure that every American who wants a job paying $15 an hour or more, can get one first, before any immigrant does.
And the federal government needs to offer moving expenses to help Americans get to new jobs, as well as living expenses, such as vouchers to stay in hotels until enough money from paychecks can be saved to fund permanent housing.
The expenses, transportation and logistics to strategically move people around America to fill jobs should be a top priority for the government because:
Making American’s feel that they are part of what’s happening in the employment process would go a long way to heal the nation and make people feel hopeful about their futures.
With this objective, the government, could create or help fund a new jobs channel to get news and information out. The American Jobs Network, could be formatted just like the weather channel, including video clips from other T.V. stations around the country.
It could have the latest updates for how many jobs are not filled and how to apply for them with messages scrolling across the bottom of the screen like “for this job go to USAjobs.gov to apply,” and a 24-hour government hotline number displayed frequently to call for more information.
The jobs channel could have pizazz, and broadcast stories about the people who filled jobs, including the tough ones.
It would include information about hot jobs, and entertainment about work – including showing movies like 9 to 5, shows like The Office, and reruns of Tough Jobs.
Additionally, the weekly job chat videos from Mayor Pete and/or other celebrities and local people, could provide stories about how they achieved success.
It also could have featured news about infrastructure projects like roads, bridges, and environmental improvements, as they unfold across America to replace the crumbling infrastructure.
Capture people’s interest, and they might get hooked on positive government action!
To increase skin in the game – people in towns, and cities could contribute videos about any job-related topic, like those of bridges being replaced.
Going back to the charts and graphs – the job shortage areas across America could be stressed, as well as areas of the country needing people to move there.
Certain jobs on the shortage list could be color coded, including jobs from small businesses struggling to find workers, shop owners working 16 hours a day, and bigger companies.
The same type of color coding as extreme weather could be applied to the job situations across America i.e. red for extreme shortage of workers etc.
After the jobs channel is created structured like the weather channel, and the website USAjobs.gov is expanded to include Infrastructure jobs, the T.V. programming content could be expanded in more detail by job topics to include:
- Jobs to fill due to our aging population
- Jobs in industries that can’t find people – i.e. trades
- Jobs in the medical field
- Trucking jobs
- Farm worker jobs
- Warehouse workers
- Meat packing plant workers
- Other difficult jobs American’s don’t want
- Contract workers for infrastructure jobs
- Unusual jobs or jobs of interest
Helen’s Place LLC is excited to make this suggestion for an “American Jobs Network,” as outlined in this article. It will continue to report on the topic of how to be more efficient utilizing American manpower to fill jobs.
Related audio/video interview recording:
Becky Frankiewicz, ManpowerGroup Inc. Chief Commercial Officer, discusses July 2022 jobs report and resilience of the U.S. Labor market with Yahoo Finance Live:
Video, Yahoo!Finance, August 5, 2022, “The American workforce ‘is an economy that just won’t quit’: Manpower Group CCO”
Other related article you may be interested in:
News related infrastructure article:
Helen’s Place LLC, “Human Infrastructure and People on-the-Move Ready to Work”
Helen’s Place LLC is an information and educational materials company celebrating English Language Arts, Cognitive Science and the love of birds.
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