[TonyM]

Congratulations! That's a cute little (well not so little) guy! Glad to hear your wife is doing OK!

 

[TonyM]

Some of today’s youth have a sense of entitlement. They don’t want to work their way to the top, they want to start at the top. They do not understand that just because they got a degree or diploma that made getting a specific job possible, that they are still a junior employee and are on probation until they prove themselves. Time in with a company ,course upgrading or higher levels of certification all add up to a higher pay scale. However, having said this, many employers today offer contracts. Often, they do not provide any benefits and retirement packages are not available. So where is the incentive? Yes, it is a different job market from the one that I worked my way through to retirement for sure.
If I were a young person today, I would focus on electronics, computer technology, programming and processing as the world revolves around computers today. The more degrees, diplomas, certifications and additional skills in this area the better.
Almost every job today requires the employee to have some computer skills; whether they must be proficient in word processing and program management or to be skilled in using specialized computerized equipment and diagnostic tools.
It’s a Brave New World..

True. Finding good people that are interested in hard work and fit in well at work has never been easy but it is definitely hard now. Partly because of that sense of entitlement and partly because people are not as willing to put up with being treated badly and taken advantage of as they once were.

As you said, pretty much any job now requires computer skills. The better your computer skills, the more successful you will be in just about any job today. Maybe not as important to a carpenter or plumber for example but still an asset.

I think each young person has to try to decide for themselves if working with their hands is for them. Easy to say but very hard to do! Many won't have had any, or very little at least, exposure to hard, dirty, stressful and sometimes dangerous work environments however. So making a decision to do that long term for a living might be difficult for them. Some start out in trades and end up in white collar jobs. I know a guy that trained as a welder and went back to university and became a mechanical engineer (and a darn good one too). I started as a construction labourer at 18 and after two years went back to school, took business and became an accountant.

It would be great if young people got more real help in figuring out the point where what they like to do, what they want to do and what they are or may actually be good at intersects. Doesn't matter what you do if you are skilled in your field I think you will generally be happier in life because we spend a large part of our life at work.