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Comment by farceSpherule | Hacker News Reader

The work on your line might "suck" but it is a good paying job with free benefits and requires no college degree, special trade school, or certification.

There are plenty of poorly qualified, undereducated Americans who can fill these low skill jobs.

There is nothing to fix. It is a job. It pays money. Not everyone has the ability to excel in a "career." They simply need a job.

And, no one can compete with China. All companies operating in China, regardless of ownership (state-owned, private, or foreign-owned), are subject to the same political influence. If the government tells a company to do something, the company does it. China also manipulates its currency as a means to drive its predominantly export-oriented economy.

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Then tell me where these poorly qualified, undereducated Americans who can fill these low skill jobs are?

The business's biggest success with finding employees was getting in the good graces of the local probation officers who refer ex-cons to us, and that comes with its own set of problems.

Other than paying a premium for temps at a temp agency that's been the only way as of the last 5-10 years to get employees in the door. Normal applications are crickets.

Raise the pay. I get that at a small scale that might not be possible, but if it isn't that just means they don't have a viable business, at least in their current location.

I hear China's labor costs are lower. If your point is that Made in USA is maybe too expensive, we've gone full circle.

More expensive than made in China, though with the moral price of supporting sweatshop factories. "Too expensive" is a value judgment. Maybe they could get their customers to accept a higher price, or find other customers who are less price-sensitive or will pay for something they can provide that China cannot.

Or maybe they cant and this is the best they can do? Maybe they know more about their business than you do?

There is no doubt they know more but no matter the business, if you can’t keep employees you either need to pay more or make the job more attractive in some other way and if you can’t do that and still make a profit then you don’t have a viable business.

Then we are back to the beginning. Labor intense manufacturing is not viable in the united states.

This is the whole argument for tariffs.

If you are paying people $7.25 an hour, then perhaps you deserve to go out of business.

Line work in the conditions you describe should be paying $16 to $26 per hour, with an average of about $18 per hour.

Surely that's in a LCOL area like some small rural town, right? $18 is what teens around here get for flipping burgers and running cash registers.

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