Something happened when Americans began emerging through the tunnel that was the coronavirus pandemic. They were changed, which was inevitable given the impact of the long-term shift in our jobs and our home life. We learned the advantages and cost savings of working remotely, and the downside of it. We grew in our appreciation for teachers after we were informally deputized as resident teachers. President Joe Biden understands all of this, and he is riding this wave as job numbers flow into the public.
We almost hit the pre-pandemic jobless claim levels of 256,000 with 293,000 for the week, according to the Labor Department. In fact, there are Help Wanted signs all up and down our streets. People have reassessed what they want in their lives after this long time of pandemic reflection. We see many career changes, sometimes to a lesser paying position, just to experience a job we may love instead of dealing with the office crazy who swoops out of her office every morning, battle axe in hand.
Others want to continue working remotely. Many companies have reassessed their ideas about remote employees. They consider how much they save on office space rentals and a quieter office environment.
When the pandemic hit full force in March and April 2020, over 20 million employees lost their jobs, according to The Washington Post. The numbers started racking up to as many as one million per day. The pandemic forced many businesses in the service and tourism sectors to close. That hurt, because we had become a “service-centric economy” with so many lower-wage jobs.
But we can pull ourselves away from that economic base and turn to more advanced, well-paying jobs if President Joe Biden can just get Senators Joe Manchin (D-KY) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) to cooperate, The Guardian reports. These two senators are all that stand between American and the president’s high-paying jobs economy. He proposes a whole panoply of jobs, many not requiring a four-year college degree. Environmental jobs are just one example.
In the 18 months since the pandemic began, restaurants and other service industries have opened, and America has learned to adjust. President Biden says he wants to bring manufacturing from start to finish back in this country, and we should. Otherwise, we will be caught again depending upon a less-than-friendly country (China) for our livelihoods. We need to make ventilators, masks, and thousands of other things here.
Republicans pulled well-paying manufacturing jobs away from their people in the 1980s and left them stranded, hopeless, and angry. Now, President Biden wants those jobs here. After a year and a half of the pandemic, some industries lost employees. Nurses became burned out, but at the same time, applications for nursing and medical schools have skyrocketed.
Many institutions utilize Licensed Practical Nurses (LPNs), who can operate at nearly the same level as RN’s, and those jobs come out of the junior colleges. That education would be free under our president’s human infrastructure bill. He wants two extra free years of education and ample, good pre-kindergarten programs. Our president knows the value of long-term thinking.
About 4.3 million Americans in historic numbers left their jobs in August according to the Labor Department report released on Tuesday. We have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to build back our middle and working classes, only better. Senator Manchin must step aside and out of his firmly held belief that doing so creates an “entitlement culture.” To not do so, continues the GOP’s entitlement culture for the wealthy.
Sinema must do the same. Her problem is not entitlement per se. She wants to lead in an environmental restructuring. This is about more than just two lone senators. It is about a decades-long opportunity for hope and job security with just “a little more extra,” as President Biden says. The Washington Post tweeted:
‘Weekly jobless claims fall below 300,000 for first time since pandemic.’
Three White Lions podcast, Gloria Christie reads her week’s most important news/ commentary stories in the liberal online newspaper The Bipartisan Report. Gloria Christie Report her newsletter for people on the go. Written in her own unique style with a twist of humor in a briefer version of Bipartisan Report. Christie’s Mueller Report Adventures In Bite-Sizes a real-life compelling spy mystery. Find her here on Facebook.
