Meaning in work

I'm currently reading an interesting, if a bit disheartening book, 'Bait and Switch' by Barbara Ehrenreich, about getting a professional white-collar job at or around the age of 40. Its interesting because its a look at people who were discarded by their companies for one reason or another. Down-sizing, mergers, lay-offs, all the different reasons that people lose jobs. Except, what gets missed is that its PEOPLE who are losing their jobs.

When a company, say Chrysler, lays off 5,000 white collar employees, that's 5,000 white collar employees who suddenly are in the job market looking for jobs like the one they had, except hopefully more stable. (I understand that some would just retire, others wouldn't seek another job, but lets just say for simplicity that nearly 5,000 would go looking.) That's quite a few people out wandering around looking for work. Especially since many of the jobs today seem to exist only to insure that people show up to meetings.

This is not a knock on the workers. Sure, there are plenty of 'Wally's' in the workforce, but there are pleny of people who are motivated to do their jobs. Or would be if they could see that their jobs actually mattered. So much time is spent in meetings and speaking a foreign language filled with buzzwords that don't actually mean anything, that lots of companies could cut back payroll by 15% and not notice it if getting things accomplished was actually the goal of management.

Now, I know on a macro level that there are goals and such, but so much focus on the lower level is spent on internal issues as opposed to actually doing things that move the company, or person forward. Too many employees today don't see enough purpose to their work. Since they see no purpose, their output suffers. Also too many managers are looking over their own shoulders knowing an easy way to cut payroll is to eliminate a bunch of $100K jobs.

We have so many "qualified" people and only so many jobs to take them. I see this as a symptom of not actually making things in this country anymore. Someone who's management skills might at one point helped run a plant, is now in charge of PR or Marketing or Accounting shifting money from one part of the company to another. Some of the jobs are VITAL, but there are so many of them now that not all of them are actually useful anymore, and employees feel it.

I'm not a protectionist. I understand aspects of the global economy and our part in it. But, we do need some products made here. Not everyone can be a 'white-collar' professional. There is nothing wrong with that, different people have different skill sets. However, if we don't start creating some jobs that pay a decent wage, i.e. enough that 2 of them can support a middle-class family, serious issues are going to arise down the road. Are arising already in some sectors like housing.

I don't know what the solution is. But I do know that I hate going to the store and being excited to buy something made in Mexico instead of something made in China, and those two being my ONLY options.