Green Jobs: A New Hope for America?

Tuesday, April 21st, US secretary of Labor, Hilda L. Solis, spoke before congress. Her statement may be found here.

Unemployment is certainly a hot topic right now with many US States entering the double digit zone, so those of us who have lost a job recently, or may soon loose our job, should sit up and listen to what the US Labor secretary is saying ... and evaluate. My own job is in jeopardy since the factory I work in is aging and has posted a shut-down time-frame near the end of the year. Call me a skilled laborer whose current position has little to do with green energy, yet I make a decent family wage and ... many of my skills are directly transferable to green manufacturing.

Ms. Solis made the following statement;

"For instance, many green jobs are in the construction trades, and these jobs tend to pay above average wages. The May 2007 Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates published by BLS indicate that construction and extraction occupations pay a median hourly rate of $17.57 as opposed to $15.10 for all occupations. Therefore, we can expect that many green jobs will pay 10 percent to 20 percent better than other jobs"

Undoubtedly this statement on its face is factual. And yet I wonder if it is fallacious as an apples to oranges (or perhaps fruit in general) comparison by saying that a median hourly rate of construction workers needed for green jobs is higher than the median of 'all occupations'. What I want to know is how does the median green construction job compare to non-green.

What has sparked me to ask this question is that I have been comparing my own skill-set green to non-green and found green to be lacking, much as I wish it were otherwise. So since her wage analysis in this instance is made on one data point that is somewhat lacking in statistical meaning, I find it hard to give her conclusion of 10 to 20% better pay much merit. It would only be worth mentioning if the construction industry were already hard at work making the median wage, thereby requiring the green construction workers to be pulled out of the lower-wage job markets. But we all know that construction has been significantly impacted by the economy. Therefore, we need to re-employ those have already been making better than median paying jobs, but are simply out of work ... and have been for some time now.

Sorry, Madam Secretary, I'm not buying the premise nor your conclusion.

Moving down the page a bit she adds;

For its part, the Department of Labor's Employment and Training Administration (ETA) has already made available $3.47 billion in Recovery Act funds to support workforce investment activities. Such activities include retraining dislocated workers, summer employment for youth and community service employment for low-income seniors.

Good. The Trade Agreements Act (TAA) of 1979 did this already, but was limited in scope to people whose jobs were shipped overseas. I look forward to seeing how this plays out. I cannot help but wonder, however, if a dislocated worker desiring to become an Engineer (which are in high demand in the green energy market right now) will be able to tap into this funding for higher education since there is such a need there ... or will it merely be a lateral type of re-training program? Most likely there will be no funds for moving up, rather only for lateral re-training.

Finally, Ms. Solace evoked the Vice Presidents own words in a manner that caused me to cringe based on what I know and fear;

At our recent Middle Class Task Force meeting in Philadelphia, Vice President Biden stated that 'we'll measure our success, whether it's four years or eight years by one thing: If we can raise the standard of living for middle-class people.' We cannot ignore the disconnect that persisted between economic growth and middle-class incomes even when the economy was strong. I am committed to ensuring that both diversity and inclusion are reflected in the federal funding of green jobs workforce training.

Madam Secretary of Labor, and Mr. Vice President, for all of our sakes, I sincerely hope you both have a firmer grasp on this problem than this article would imply that you do, or rather do not.

In conclusion, I would like to say; no doubt we will find our way out of this mess (both economically and energy independence-wise). But let us not look solely to the governemnt to fix it. Our nation was built by people who were fiercly independent; those who were at once capable of standing on their own two feet in adversity, as well as generous enough to help a neighbor in need. I submit that that same spirit will see us through these difficult times more than dependence on a stimulus bill that from certain angles appears to be inadequate to the need, and from other angles looks to be dauntingly large.

HydroBooster signing out and encouraging everyone to be good to each other.