Mike Rowe's Job Market

I’ve been a fan of Mike Rowe’s ever since accidentally seeing him as a guest on Fox News. Rowe is known for his work on the Discovery Channel series Dirty Jobs and the CNN series Somebody's Gotta Do It. He recently received the Independent Women’s Forum “Distinguished Gentleman” award, and the report on his acceptance speech is here. He expands on five major themes and closes with:

“We don’t need American Idols,” he said. “We need American icons. Icons of work. The country needs a parapateia [turning point, or as Rowe put it “a reversal of fortune or a sudden change in circumstances”]. We need to tell better stories of men and women who master a trade. We have to stop telling kids to blindly follow their passion and show them the opportunities that exist. That was the big, overarching message of ‘Dirty Jobs.’ The message that the headlines that ultimately caught up to: There is dignity in all work and opportunity is alive and well.”

Rowe talks about

finding people who were willing to show up early and stay late and learn a skill that was actually in demand. The business of recruitment was a difficult thing. Everywhere I went on the road was ‘Help wanted’ signs. The least I could do was to shine a light on some opportunities that typically go ignored.

The statistics back Rowe up. There are currently 1.5 trillion dollars of student loans on the books, and seven million jobs available, 75 percent of which don’t require a 4 year degree. But they do require training. Rowe wanted to provide such training as a way to begin to bridge the gap between goals and completion, college and a job, and failure and dignity.

Help wanted. In demand. Opportunities. The Tea Party is all about free markets, and Rowe is doing a lot to bring them back in focus. The rest of the report at The Federalist is here; Rowe's speech is linked at the top of the page, including the video. 

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