Are unemployed Americans lazy because they wont come to the West Slope to cut corn?
Last week, the New York Times published a story about the difficulties of an Olathe, Colo., farmer who tried to reduce the number of seasonal workers he employed and instead hire some local residents to harvest his sweetcorn and onions.
How can there be a labor shortage, the piece began, when nearly one out of every 11 people in the nation are underemployed?
The answer is complex, although parts are obvious. Most of those millions of unemployed and underemployed people dont live anywhere near Olathe, and most cant relocate for a few weeks of agricultural work. Few such jobs exist in most places, even in Montezuma County.
Many people are physically unable to perform such hard physical labor, and out here, those who can logically opt for higher-paying, longer-term jobs in the energy industry. One perspective is that Americans have grown soft. Another, not contradictory to the first, is that Americans logically have taken the most stable and lucrative jobs available to them, and seasonal farm labor does not meet those criteria. Thats good sense, not laziness. Work can be demanding in a variety of ways, and its unfair to accuse teachers, for example, of being afraid of hard work.
Like any occupation from data entry to professional athletics, farm work requires a skill set, and its one that should not be undervalued. Producers who have a limited time to get fresh vegetables in from the field wont be happy with the efforts of laid-off pencil-pushers. Not only is it unrealistic to expect those people to be able to step into harvest jobs, its demeaning to those skilled ag workers who really can do their jobs much better than can the average unemployed American worker.
Later last week, the Times published a Room for Debate package in which five commentators attempted to explain why the switch to local labor has not worked out. One pointed out that it makes no financial sense for an unemployed worker to risk his or her unemployment benefit for a few weeks of $10/hr. paychecks. Another said that ag work used to pay better, until immigrants began performing it. A third pointed out that H-2A immigrant workers are a captive labor force, allowed in the United States only while theyre employed. That means they are more likely to tolerate working conditions that Americans have long considered substandard.
None of those responses satisfactorily addresses the underlying question: Is farm work, near minimum wage, all that unemployed Americans can hope to gain? And is that idea acceptable to Americans? (The Occupy Wall Street movement suggests it is not.)
The skills of the jobless in this country dont match up well with the jobs that remain available. Thats one reason that, although the recession officially ended two years ago, the economy continues to feel worse. The old jobs arent coming back.
Some western Colorado residents did go to work picking corn. A little income was better than none, so they took the work they could get. Thats an honorable choice, and according to many pundits, its clearly the right one.
But an economic future in which field work is the only job a skilled and experienced worker can find, and then only relatively few workers for a relatively short time, is a prospect that bears careful consideration. The problem isnt that unemployed Americans are lazy. Its that their jobs may be permanently gone.
