Fastest Growing Jobs on Long Island (Logical Fallacy)

[Chris_Wendt]

Quoting Newsday

"The state Labor Department has identified five occupations projected to be among the fastest-growing on Long Island this year.

They are registered nurse, with an annual median wage of $83,220; carpenter helpers, $26,460; medical scientists, excluding epidemiologists, $95,130; personal-care aides, $25,400; and software developers with skills in creating and modifying applications, $97,380."

But the report continues, gingerly...

"Job seekers on Long Island have met with mixed success since the recession ended in June 2009. The Island has made up the number of jobs it lost during the recession, but that growth has been uneven, with lower-wage jobs growing the fastest. Meanwhile, a skills deficit has created shortages in some of the higher-skilled jobs on the Island."

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It is very important, critical even, that we all understand what should have been and could have been the fastest growing jobs on LI, if only we had enough job seekers properly prepared (educated, trained) for those (higher paying) jobs...those higher paying jobs which have left LI for places where there are pools of better qualified people to fill them, and, because the companies which offer such higher paying jobs are not taxed as drastically as they would have been had those companies, and their higher paying jobs, remained here, on LI (or in NYC).

Thoughtfully...

Chris Wendt

[Chris_Wendt]

There are still a few good jobs in need of qualified people on Long Island, but I think young people need to keep their options open to relocating in order to pursue many career objectives.

The following are real jobs for which my company is recruiting. The majority are in Engineering, and most are located in Long Island City, Queens.
But you will notice that there are opportunities from here to Florida to Texas and in the Midwest.

Position	Category	Location
Help Desk Operator	IT	Lewisville, TX
Pricing Analyst	Marketing	Lewisville, TX
Product Manager	Marketing	Long Island City, NY
Demand Planning Analyst	Demand Planning	Long Island City, NY
Project Design Engineer	Engineering	Long Island City, NY
Project Design Engineer: DC Motors	Engineering	Long Island City, NY
Project Design Engineer: Gears	Engineering	Long Island City, NY
Manufacturing Engineer	Engineering	Independence, KS
Mechanical Design Engineer	Engineering	Independence, KS
Manufacturing Engineering Technician	Engineering	Mishawaka, IN
Project Manager	Engineering	Greenville, SC
Electronic Lab Test Technician	Engineering	Fort Lauderdale, FL
Diesel Engineer	Engineering	Grapevine, TX

If anyone would like more information about, or to refer someone for consideration for any of these positions, please email me in confidence at [e-mail]

Searching...

Chris Wendt

[Phil Wendt (WHS '67)]

I think this is very interesting.  However, the other side of the jobs issue for NY and LI is also the geographic differential in cost of living across the country.  I looked up on one of the many COL calculators on the web and saw that someone working in Queens earning $50K only needs to earn ~ $37K in Ft. Lauderdale.  LI isn't just competing with with other locales for jobs but also lifestyles and standards of living.  It's just plain cheaper to live in many other places than LI.  I won't ask you how the salary range for the same job might differ between Queens and Fla., but I'd be interested to know whether that range in salary reflects the COL differential between those two locales.  My only point here is that LI has to compete with certain tangible quality of life issues that it can't do anything about...things that are well beyond it's school system to correct for.  

[Chris_Wendt]

The cost of living index is an important factor or component of the employment market, but it is not the sole factor determining job availability. My company is nearly 100 years old and has expanded from it original location in Long Island City to numerous plants and offices in several states, and five countries on three continents. All manufacturing and distribution has been moved out of NY, largely due to the COL, here, compared with the COL in other places to which various production lines have moved. Our corporate IT Department is in Lewisville (Dallas) Texas, but our design and development Engineering Departments remain in our LIC headquarters, owing mostly to the investment in R&D technology, and the engineering talent pool we have developed here over the decades. However, with the last manufacturing jobs having left LIC in 2008, engineering support jobs (manufacturing engineering, industrial engineering, safety engineering, plant engineering, etc.) have all followed the manufacturing operations.

You are familiar with the quality of life in Dallas. Greenville and Fort Lauderdale, as places to live and work, would not be unattractive to most Long Islanders. Mishawaka, Indiana, is part of South Bend, a nice place, but not generally a choice destination for Long Islanders. Independence, Kansas is rural and remote, two hours north of Tulsa, Oklahoma, and would be considered rather a different environment to most of us, here. Yet we are a big employer, there, attractive as a modern place, but especially as a great company to work for.

Our compensation & benefits are competitive, not only with all other employers in all the areas we operate as a local employer, but also with our competitors who operate in China and other low-cost production areas, selling products to the same customer base.

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You recognize one aspect of my interest, that being that schools can or could react to demand for qualified future employees. However, those jobs may not necessarily be on LI or in NYC, presently or in the future. If LI schools target their developmental strategies to producing qualified home health aides and carpenter helpers, then we will be creating a self-fulfilling prophecy of even fewer higher paying jobs, here, due to lack of higher qualified graduates, here.

Regards,

Chris

[Phil Wendt (WHS '67)]

So help me see where you're going here. Are the "Schools" you reference K-12, just HS, or JC, and/or University level? It sounds like you might be talking more about more focused technical schools like vocational training or industrial arts type schools ( I know these are probably antiquated names for these types of schools). Seems like only these types of technical schools are more focused on providing qualified workers for a more regional work force. K-12 pretty much focuses on college prep while university level schools focus less on a particular region and more on a field of study or a profession. JCs and technical schools are the ones more connected to the region in which they're located. So calibrate me as to the "schools" you're talking about. My sense has always been that there was a total disconnect between what was going on in K-12 classrooms and what was happening in the 'real' world. Sounds like that may still be true today.

Phil

[Chris_Wendt]

I wanted to address this over the weekend, or Monday morning (today), but I was constrained by storm preparations. You have, as usual, opened the door to broader and deeper questions.
I expect to be snowbound tomorrow, unless I can get out into the woods with my camera. I hope to have a meaningful response on Wednesday or Thursday morning.

Chris

[Chris_Wendt]

Phil Wendt (WHS '67) posited:

"My sense has always been that there was a total disconnect between what was going on in K-12 classrooms and what was happening in the 'real' world. Sounds like that may still be true today?"

The context was the Labor Department having reported on what are registering as "the fastest growing jobs on LI", and a broader perspective (mine) about the world of work (what Phil is referencing as "the real world"). Two of the fastest growing occupations on LI are health aide and carpenter helper. This, in the Cradle of Aviation, where once an Engineering Degree was worth its weight in gold, and aeronautical and electrical engineers could name their price (salary) for jobs in the aviation, manufacturing or computer industries.

We built airplanes and space vehicles. Long Island helped America win global wars and put men on the Moon! A far cry from staffing assisted living facilities and building condos in vacant school yards.

Paradigm shift for Education!

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Whilst computers and networks and programs have evolved massive connectivity and personalized content distribution capacity, our public schools are in a rut, trying to teach sound basics, trying to adhere to a common core of curriculum and assessments, yet hoping to remain "relevant" to a wildly fluid, even squishy job market that has seen some of the best jobs (and many of the best minds) leave LI for less expensive regions to conduct business, on the one hand, yet our school districts have divorced ourselves from Vo-Tech education, you know, teaching in public high schools those skills needed to make good carpenter helpers and pre-qualified health aides.

I don't mean to paint a totally bleak picture, because our schools, particularly Wantagh, are still among the very best, even if that means we rank superbly highly among a plethora of mediocre small, self-contained, white, English-speaking school districts.

Online education, educational programs in storefronts, self-directed learning, especially enrichment...these are establishing themselves, growing, and expanding their reach and popularity in leaps and bounds. Charter Schools are gaining momentum, along with specialty schools (e.g., IB) and vaunted private and religious high schools and prep schools. I foresee in the near future Charter Schools for middle class white kids specializing in very rigorous advanced curricula. The alternative to such a development COULD BE a group of neighboring middle class, white, English-speaking public school districts pooling their financial and professional resources and opening a Magnet STEM Academy, for example, before a well-heeled and well-financed private charter school operator sets-up shop in one of the several closed or under-utilized public school buildings which dot Nassau County.  I hope that implies some sense of urgency, as in a race against time.

What is needed to close or eliminate the disconnect that Phil senses is a complete re-vamp of educational leadership in our State and Nation. This would include insuring there are challenging rigorous opportunities available for smart kids who are not necessarily poor, disadvantaged, or non-English speaking; such opportunities many not necessarily be provided by or in your traditional local public high school, but would be financed by your local school district, if your local school district does not itself provide such opportunities for your smart, white, middle-class, English-speaking kid.

The ages-old system of grouping kids into arbitrary grade levels based on age should disappear for the most part, by about what is traditionally fourth grade. Okay, for implementation purposes, let's say fifth grade, with the establishment of a new secondary system starting at age ten (on a qualification basis), and encompassing an ungraded Middle School type curriculum which allows kids to advance to the high school level as early as twelve years of age, based on their individual qualifications and accomplishments, not all of which may have been garnered in their local public middle school.

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My recollection of high school is as a member of a small student body enrolled on a competitive basis from all around LI. It happened (happens) to be a religious school (Chaminade). However, the public secondary education of the future could include competitive secondary schools serving kids from all around Long Island, in a non-religious educational venue. NY City already has such a system, and has for many years. The specialized, competitive NY City high school program has already withstood two challenges in the Court of Appeals, as was twice deemed legal and constitutional. Imagine a Chaminade, or Kellenberg, or St. Anthony's, or Lutheran High, Friends Academy, or any of the Hebrew Academies or Yeshivas operating on a nonsectarian basis, funded by public school district dollars in the form of tuition vouchers for eligible, qualified enrollees from across the Island? ...or from around the state? ...or from anywhere for that matter?

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If what we offer our kids in our local public schools becomes more disconnected from the world of work, then all the Common Core Curriculum, all the best intentions of making our local kids career-ready or college ready, will be similarly disconnected, and become less and less relevant with both the passage of time and advances in educational technology and content delivery platforms.

Which AP© courses your kid gets to take, which foreign languages your kid gets to learn, what artistic interests or scientific subjects your kid wants to explore in her or his teenaged (or pre-teen) years should NOT be the exclusive prerogative of your local school board (or even the nefarious State Education Department) to determine. What is or will be relevant for your individual child's educational career and ultimately her or his life's pursuits should be, first and foremost, your ultimate decision. We have a way to go it seems, but not that far, really.

Regards,

Chris Wendt

[Phil Wendt (WHS '67)]

Very well done, Chris! You have crisply articulated something I had thought for a long time. The disconnect is real and needs fixing. We need an educational system that attracts the best and brightest teachers and pays them accordingly. Teaching K-12 is not an attractive career path for folks who could get jobs that pay significantly more than teaching. Anyway, you've given us all something to think about. And maybe what you suggest is just beyond a public school system to fix.

Phil ('WHS, '67)

[Chris_Wendt]

Yes...yes...not completely...

NY State's Governor is again holding educators feet to the fire during the nascent state budget development process, by demanding or insisting upon new laws: 

• More Charter Schools
• Greater reliance on Common Core test scores for teacher evaluations
• Tenure reforms
• Making the ersatz "Tax Cap" permanent
• Not releasing to school districts the preliminary (baseline) state aid projections from his preliminary budget (taking away their ability to featherbed their local school budgets). 
  

It is undeniable that Long Island and Westchester teachers and school administrators are the highest paid educators in the nation, and among the highest paid classes of employees of all kinds, here. Yet private and religious schools attract and retain equally or more competent (better...brighter) faculty than many high-paying public school districts, for a lot less money, and with no state pension or lifetime medical benefits (or costs), and produce arguably better overall results consistently, perennially. So throwing more money at public school teachers is not (has not been) the answer to mediocre (or, to the presently crappy ELA assessment) results for public school students.

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One initiative on the books in NY is the prospect of a state funded school tax freeze for districts who consolidate in some fashion to save money and who remain under the "two percent tax cap". Almost zero efforts are underway among LI school districts to qualify and take advantage of this incentive. One way I suggest for districts to consolidate could be, for example, Wantagh, Seaford, Island Trees, and Plainedge to get together and:

• initiate at STEM Academy on a magnet school basis
• insure that, among these four neighboring districts, 100% of all available AP© courses are offered to any student who wants any of them, even if some kids will attend a high school in the village next door
• increase and intensify the arts and music program offerings, especially at the high end, again, on a magnet school basis
• coordinate offering a much wider selection of foreign languages, a selection driven by individual parent preferences rather than by majority tastes and the preferences of school board members
• institute an International Baccalaureate ("IB") program, in a magnet school basis

Central to all four of these small districts is the larger and higher functioning Levittown School District. If we (the four small neighboring districts) could overcome our prejudices concerning Levittown, imagine the financial, technical, facilities and transportation resources that could be pooled into a terrific regional educational powerhouse!

...for example.

Chris Wendt

[Phil Wendt (WHS '67)]

Very good idea in taking a more regional approach to this. Good luck hearing the cats to warm up to Levittown.

Well done!