Rooney: Finding a Good Job

Every day, I read about how hard it is for a lot of people to find a good job. I'm skeptical of course, because I think if you know how to do anything, someone's going to pay you to do it.

The fact is, even with the economy getting better, good jobs are still scarce of course. I suppose a lot of companies are doing whatever they do with fewer people now. That's the American way, after all. What they make may not be any good but that doesn't bother them. A lot of companies are more interested in money than in their product.

I've been lucky most of my life, but I've been out of work a few times too so I know what it is like not to have a good job or enough money. Something's wrong though because there's so much work to be done everywhere in the world that there should never be any unemployment. The problem is, the theory assumes that a person who has been an executive, for example, would clean up debris by the side of the road for the county supervisor if he really needed a job. He won't do that of course because what he thinks he ought to be is the county supervisor.

They say that in most companies middle management people have been hit the hardest with layoffs, whatever "middle-management" is, and a lot of them are college graduates too who thought their degrees made sure they could get a good job.

Would it be a waste of education for someone who graduates from Yale for example, to become a plumber, an electrician or a bricklayer? We need people who can actually do things. We have too many bosses and too few workers.

More college graduates ought to become plumbers or electricians, then, go home at night and read Shakespeare.

Written by Andy Rooney