Unemployment is low in the US though? what type of jobs do high school grads do? and would working in a (let say) doll factory be a better job for them?
A lot of people work dead end jobs at walmart or trucking (which is another industry that has taken a big shit like manufacturing)
Manufacturing and trucking jobs and the like paid 20-40% above what you could make at Walmart and other big corporations.
I grew up in a rural town and people decry losing jobs to places like walmart. That said, I still think the bread and butter of american business are all the small businesses that are still kind of trucking.
Small construction companies, small engine repair, home repair, mechanics, etc.
As a high school grad with nothing but a diploma I got jobs working retail, doing data entry/discovery for a law firm, working the graveyard shift as a receptionist for a 24-hour facility. Are those better than doing factory work? I don't know. The discovery one was pretty cushy, but still rather monotonous.
They move to where the jobs are but the ones left behind without a big-city job have disproportionately large political power and disproportionately little education. Letting land vote was a generationally catastrophic mistake, the US has a political system suited for an agrarian/early-industrial/frontier society rather than an urban industrialized society that also happens to be hegemon of the world.
