The Ignorant Investor

The New York Times ran a piece in today's paper headlined "Foreign Makers, Settled in South, Pace Car Industry" that described the ongoing trend of foreign auto makers setting up assembly plants in the American south and the nature of the work force they're finding there.

This passage gives you a sense of just how desperate people are to get a solid, middle-class job with a big company in these times of economic growth:

The process of getting a job at Toyota is rigorous, meant to weed out those not meant for the repetitive, sometimes hot work inside the plant, which sits on 200 acres surrounded by cotton fields.

After interviews, job seekers had to complete five weeks of pre-employment training at a center, which is run and paid for by the state, across the road from Alabama A&M University. The drill included exercises to see if they could work on teams and hours spent on a practice assembly line. None of the applicants were paid. Anyone who was late or missed a training session was instantly cut.

The few successful applicants went through nine weeks more training inside the engine plant, including two hours a day in a fully equipped gym where they ran on treadmills and lifted weights to build endurance.

Reading this, I can't believe that the labor market be as tight as the unemployment numbers indicate when people will work for nothing for five weeks in the hope of getting a half-decent job on an assembly line.

Come to think of it, this piece has given me a new test for gauging the state of the labor market in America. Just find out how many pushups Toyota is demanding during a job interview. The higher the number, the more desperate the workers are.