Offer the job, and they will come
The May 18 article, “A Job Americans Won’t Do, Even at $34 an Hour,” only proves that the U.S. is large and diverse enough to supply anecdotes supporting every position under the sun. The article concludes that Americans consider hard manual labor beneath them because $34-an-hour landscaping jobs go unfilled at a single company in Orange County, which reportedly has the lowest unemployment rate of any county in California and a high cost of living. Confirmation comes from a local who makes $60,000 a year detailing cars.
Never mind that about 80% of U.S. construction workers, earning an average of $19 an hour, are native-born Americans.
If the wage for landscaping jobs were raised to $34 an hour almost anywhere else in the country, underemployed Americans would flock to them.
KARL VON SCHRILTZ
Washington
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