Help wanted

Jobs wait for us all

AT LAST report, help is wanted across the country. To cite just a couple of examples: Maine’s department of transportation is having a hard time finding enough snowplow drivers to clear that state’s roads. And in Texas, drillers can’t find enough drivers to haul all the oil that the state is producing in the wake of the shale-oil boom. Everything’s coming up roses, or whatever bloom you prefer.

Never have the opportunities to find work been so plentiful, according to the country’s Bureau of Labor Statistics. From Texas to Florida and far beyond, opportunity calls in this rejuvenated land of opportunity. These are the kinds of problems to have.

With labor short, wages should be rising. But worrywarts we will always have with us. A worried man like Wayne Winegarden of the Pacific Research Institute will somehow find a way to sing a worried song. In his case, the verse goes like this: “If you have less labor, you’re going to have less growth unless it’s compensated by more technology or higher productivity.” But faith, hope, and charity all counsel that’s what will happen—as has happened before in American history.

There are only so many taxes even this administration can cut to keep the country’s economy moving, and as economist Mr. Winegarden points out: “Most of the people who really want to get back to work—they’ve already recovered from the recession.” To the perpetually concerned, it seems there’s such a thing as too much good news.

What the country’s economy needs now isn’t just labor but skilled labor. And yet today’s skills can soon enough become yesterday’s outmoded ways of doing the job. Which is why the farsighted think ahead to the kind of knowledgeable labor force that will adapt to ever-changing demand in the future.

And what’s the best way to assure that the next generation will not find that the specialized skills they’ve cultivated at so much cost in time and expense will not be yesteryear’s obsolete skills? For who needs buggy drivers anymore? They’ve gone the way of the buggies themselves: into history.

It’s much better to concentrate on how a labor force can be sufficiently adaptable to future needs. And the only way to do that is to educate not only a labor force but the whole community so that it can be prepared for a future that doesn’t think only about economic progress but moral, cultural and spiritual advancement, too.

Once again we’re back to the question of the good life, what it is, and how to live it. And that challenge will stay with us whether the demand for labor is great or small. We all need to lift our eyes off the ground and look up, up and away to what is truly important if we are to be greater than the only material challenges this society or any other demands.

Help is definitely wanted, but not just the material kind.