Workers Needed In The Midwest

Manufacturers in northern Iowa are begging Terry Schumaker for freshly trained workers for their factories. The problem is he doesn’t have enough students to train.

“It’s not like we have the people beating down our door to apply,” said Mr. Schumaker, a dean at the North Iowa Area Community College in Mason City.

It is a problem playing out in many parts of the Midwest, a region with lower unemployment and higher job-opening rates than the rest of the country. Employers, especially in more rural areas, are finding that there are just too few workers. That upends a long-running view in Washington, D.C., and many state capitals, where policy makers often say the unemployed simply lack the skills to get hired.

You can read the rest @
https://www.wsj.com/articles/iowas-employment-problem-too-many-jobs-not-enough-people-1522580400

It's not merely a matter of skills. Here are some other factors:

• Can they afford to move there?
• Can they afford to live there?
• Does anyone WANT to live there?

And how many of these rural communities have been decimated by illegal drugs? Read the book Methland by Nick Reding to get an idea of what has been happening and how corporate America exacerbated the problem.