Have to say, my Son who is 47 works his rear off. My grand daughter who goes to a out of state university, comes home for the summer break, and immediately looks for a summer job, but she can't get hired due to here short stay at home, which really frustrating to her. Both get props from me, very proud of both of them.

The only way out would cause some seriously hard times and probably start a civil war, and since going any further with that would get into politics, I will just leave it at that.

I own a small carpentry business, and usually have 2 or 3 guys with me every spring, summer and fall. Last year and this year, every guy I've tried out has been a drug addict. 

I work for a family owned excavation company.  Started when I was done with college, not after a degree, but when I realized college was not the answer for me.  I've been with them for 16 years now and have gone from a laborer, to our construction layout guy, to our estimator and now do assistant project management work along with some of the estimating.  In the APM portion of my job, I get to do some hiring when we take on a larger job and need a few extra bodies.  My boss, the company owner, told me hiring guys is the triangle rule of 10.  For every 10 guys we hire, 4 won't make it a week, 3 will make it for the season, 2 will be around for a few seasons, and 1 will be here for 10 years or more.  He has been pretty accurate with his predictions.  We routinely have guys that apply, get hired and quit all within a week because they don't realize how physically demanding the labor position is.  The ones that stay for the season and don't come back are the guys who think they know it all after their first season and deserve to sit in the seat of an excavator, loader or dozer, because "that job isn't hard to do".  The guys who come back next year are the guys that get it and know they need to put in the time before moving up.  In the past 3 years most of the guys in the bottom two tiers of the triangle have been the 18-25 year olds.  The top two tiers are the 25-35 year olds with the occasional younger guy that has a dad who was in the industry and taught him right while he was growing up.

1 hour ago, deaknh03 said:

I own a small carpentry business, and usually have 2 or 3 guys with me every spring, summer and fall. Last year and this year, every guy I've tried out has been a drug addict. 

Yes. Sadly drugs are a rampant problem in all trades. Im almost positive that the guy we fired for trying to steal the hammer drill was dopey. I'm glad he's gone too

2 minutes ago, Mobasser said:

Yes. Sadly drugs are a rampant problem in all trades. Im almost positive that the guy we fired for trying to steal the hammer drill was dopey. I'm glad he's gone too

It used to be guys with a drinking problem, or guys that liked to smoke weed...now its guys on heroin or meth. 

Just now, deaknh03 said:

It used to be guys with a drinking problem, or guys that liked to smoke weed...now its guys on heroin or meth. 

I can't stand a meth head! Horrible d**n stuff!  There's no way they can be trusted, nor keep a job.

16 hours ago, Bankbeater said:

I work in a cube farm during the work week. I’ve been at the same job for going on 33 years. What I’m seeing is a lot of entitlement with these young people coming straight out of college. It’s all about parking places, windows, and keurig coffee machines. When I was hired I thought I was lucky to be getting a job. 

I'm approaching retirement from a similar environment and agree with some of that.  However,  those same kids who expect a Starbucks machine are better educated and work as hard or harder than we did.  They may not be willing to put in the hours we did, and have expectations that we never would have considered,  but they are productive and results oriented.  I see the coffee and teleworking and vacation hours as sort of an offset for not getting the retirement, job security, and insurance benefits that we had.

5 hours ago, Choporoz said:

I'm approaching retirement from a similar environment and agree with some of that.  However,  those same kids who expect a Starbucks machine are better educated and work as hard or harder than we did.  They may not be willing to put in the hours we did, and have expectations that we never would have considered,  but they are productive and results oriented.  I see the coffee and teleworking and vacation hours as sort of an offset for not getting the retirement, job security, and insurance benefits that we had.

alot of truth in that. i got a job with our local water dept. in ‘82 after i got out of the Marines. little did i consider all the benefits at the time. i was able to retire at the age of 52, after 30 years, with a state pension, 401K, and lifetime health insurance. the city has since pulled health insurance off the table for those that aren’t grandfathered in. i didn’t get filthy rich digging ditches but they really took care of us.