Response to NYT Blog – Hard Work is what Immigrants do

I stumbled across an opinion piece in the New York Times, which talks about the change in dynamic in a workplace. The author makes a good point that the American work style has switched from physical labor to mental labor. Even the most unskilled American worker wouldn’t want a job that is physically demanding, thus leaving all the hard labor to immigrants.

In the comments section of the same blog post, a 60 year-old user under the name “pooch43” described his experience with hiring people for menial labor. He operates a business that restores wood gymnasium floors. Even though it is physical work, there is “very little dust and the room is not hot,” so the job isn’t tremendously difficult. He started off with fifty people interested after hearing its $15/hour but that quickly cut down as soon as they found out what the job entails and it ended up with him working alone.

“Immigrants working in America” has been a heavily debated topic. Americans often complain about people from other countries taking their jobs, but that is clearly not the case. As we can see from the case above, people don’t want the job even if it pays well enough. The generation nowadays just cannot stand boring, assembly-line jobs. Unless people are desperate for money, they’ll generally opt for a job that requires brain power.

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