Current event of a business subject in the US - Essay Example

Instruction: Task: Work Ethics and the Challenge of Unemployment in the U.S The fact that a sizeable number of Americans are unemployed and more particularly the males of African-American descent is not at all in dispute. Critical analysis of the situation reveals that there may be several answers to this problem, ranging from the creation of new jobs, monetary stimulus, and sound fiscal policies. Quality of manpower is also imperative when addressing the issues arising from the topic of unemployment.

Quality in this respect does not refer to the knowledge acquired in academic institutions or even the experience gathered in the field of assignment. It makes reference to the Ingenuity that is necessary for every job assignment, from a garbage collector to a transport engineer, a tennis player to a fashion model. All these can be summed up in two words, “Work Ethics”. Without work ethics, the heavy monetary budget and incentives on education is of no use. The unpleasant news is that instilling a sound work ethic in the current social breed of youthful generation is tremendously hard to accomplish.

Work ethics has no standard definition, but it can be viewed as a set of characteristics and attitudes that an individual employee allots to the grandness and virtue of work. Some attributes of solid work ethics include promptness, diligence, reliability, ambitiousness, dutifulness, honesty, sobriety and other traits generally considered acceptable insofar as good workmanship is concerned. Lack of these attributes in a worker is made manifest through laziness, shoddy performance of tasks and waste of time in endeavors that are not job related.

To make matters worse, there is no clear legal framework for the enforcement of work ethics since it is never a part and parcel of the job description. This explains why public job creation debates ignore this argument entirely. A strong work ethic mostly results from the manner in which a person is brought up and strengthened by early and appropriate training. This is for the most part uncharacteristic of the rush to cut down unemployment in today’s world.  At a tender age, a child must be instructed on the importance of doing assignments and completing it on time, and that laziness of any form is unacceptable and inappropriate.

This calls for strong family nurturing which instills in an individual a strong sense of responsibility. Policies adopted by colleges are not of much help when it comes to instilling appropriate work ethics. There is an approach to increase college revenue by maximizing enrolment, and consequently the standards are becoming increasingly slack. This can be seen in the inveterate classroom lateness and premature exit from lectures, assigning of simpler tasks and assignments, accepting late submission of papers and even allowing retakes of failed examinations.

The colleges further degrade the quality of workforce by inflating the student’s grades whenever they fail to meet the required performance threshold.Majority of the public see unemployment as frailty. Those who do not engage in any meaningful employment are considered lazy and unmotivated by American society. In addition, there is a conviction that there are enough jobs for those seeking employment and that the unemployed lack the voracity and effort in searching for jobs. The forecast is not encouraging either as firms struggling with mediocre staff seek alternative solutions like automation with machines that are painstakingly punctual and efficient, employing motivated and cheap immigrants labor, or as has been popular recently, transferring operations overseas to destinations countries popular for dedicated workers like China.

With this trend, there might be no end in sight for the problem of unemployment. Works CitedHill, R. B. Work Ethic and Employment Status: A Study of Jobseekers. Journal of Industrial Teacher Education, 2011. Web. 11 July 2012.