By Zaldy Dandan – Variety Editor
PERHAPS the best career tip a young person can hear is: if you want to be paid well, you need to take a high-paying job.
Now, although most young people would agree with that advice, many end up in careers with limited earning potential — like those college graduates who complain that they have two expensive AB degrees but can’t find a job. Asked what they majored in, they might say something like Post-Apocalyptic Urban Foraging in Neoliberal Cities or Neo-Pagan Embodiment Practices in Late-Capitalist Fitness Apps. They “followed their passion,” one that “inspired” them and made them “feel fulfilled,” and so far, the best offers they received are teaching jobs in (very) rural areas of the States or the territories.
I’m one to talk, of course. But I also have to acknowledge that many young people are not as concerned about their finances as their parents would like. Why? I think it’s because they grew up in the only human institution where communism can somewhat “work” — the family. Marx promised that in a communist society, the primary rule is: “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.” You do what you can, but you’re compensated based on what you need. It’s mathematically unsound and cannot work when applied to nations. Yet in a typical middle-class household of a developed nation, kids grow up provided with everything, without contributing anything that helps the family’s bottom line. Shielded from rent, loans, tuition, utilities, food, clothing, healthcare, and other daily costs, many young people understandably take these things for granted. Not surprisingly, these are usually never factored into their career decisions.
Last week, The Wall Street Journal stated that the latest U.S. jobs report “showed once again why healthcare jobs, including nursing, are the most reliable tickets to middle-class prosperity.” According to the Journal:
“The median annual wage for registered nurses in the U.S. is $93,600, compared with $49,500 for all occupations, according to the Labor Department. For nurse practitioners and others with advanced degrees, it is $132,050.”
The grown-up assumption is that high pay will incentivize us to choose jobs in construction, trades, caregiving, hospitality, restaurants, farming, or healthcare. Yet historically, in the States and other developed countries with high wages, labor shortages persist precisely in those occupations.
In the CNMI, reformers and other do-gooders in the early 1990s repeatedly assured us that extending the federal wage rate to the islands would lead more local residents to join the private sector. (Said reformers and do-gooders, incidentally, were lifelong government careerists.) Today, not only is the federal rate in effect, but much higher prevailing wage rates are as well. Yet labor shortages remain a major concern in construction, healthcare, and the private sector in general. Any increase in resident workers can largely be attributed to the U.S.-citizen children of former guest workers entering the workforce.
Meanwhile, regardless of the local economic climate, a wide range of career opportunities remains available to local residents. Clearly, people in a free society have choices — and people in a free and prosperous society have more choices. Yet these facts are rarely mentioned in workforce discussions. Most continue to mouth talking points from the early days of the Commonwealth: the “need for training and higher wages,” as if the U.S. and other developed countries with bigger populations haven’t already tried both — and are still struggling with them. As if there have never been training programs or wage hikes in the CNMI. As if this were a uniquely CNMI problem.
We also talk about the CNMI as if it is a “country,” a distinct political entity — and not part of an economic powerhouse, a huge nation with a population that continues to astound the world with its creativity, innovation, and dynamism.
From The Wall Street Journal last Monday:
“Randy Shilling went to public high school in Corpus Christi, Texas. He graduated from Texas A&M University with a petroleum-engineering degree.
“For the first decade of his career, he lived in an apartment and worried about paying for vacations. Then, in his early 30s, he landed a job at a chemical plant that paid about 15% more plus bonuses, and life felt smoother. Around the same time, he bought a house on a golf course in the Houston suburb of Humble, Texas. Promotions and pay raises followed, and he saved more than $3 million for retirement. Almost without realizing it, Shilling ascended into the upper middle class…
“America’s middle class is becoming wealthier as more families scale the economic ladder into higher-earning groups. New research shows that the ranks of the affluent have grown markedly over the last 50 years or so, while the lower rungs of the middle class have shrunk.”
America is a country that will help you more when you help yourself — and breaking news: the CNMI is part of America.
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Zaldy Dandan is the recipient of the NMI Society of Professional Journalists’ Best in Editorial Writing Award and the NMI Humanities Award for Outstanding Contributions to Journalism. His four books are available on amazon.com/.
