Woohoo, TN made another top 10 list!! 8th worst state for jobs!!

It probably comes as no surprise to anyone living in TN, but our job market here is comparable to a dried up cat turd rolled in hepatitis.  In a job growth analysis conducted by our federal government, TN had the 42nd spot in job growth with a loss of 170,600 jobs since 2006 compared with TX, at #1, with an actual growth of 537,500 jobs.  Way to go Tennessee, there are only 7 states that are more depressing in the job market!!  We can also view it as an opportunity, there are 41 whole states that are more suitable for making a living, so that means you have plenty of choices on where to live. 

The classified sections of our local papers are now reduced to about 1/6th of the page.  The local arrests listed in the FYI section take up the whole page with smaller print than any other page in the paper.  The petty, depressing crime is so rampant in our area we have a weekly paper dedicated to show the faces of the arrested.  Is anyone else getting the math?  Our job market in the area is so horribly depressing that everyone is on drugs and drinking to dull the pain of unemployment.  Historically, when there are very little jobs available people turn to crime.  Every day we read about someone robbing a pharmacy for painkillers, or some caretaker ripping off their elderly patient, or some dumb teenager shoplifting from the gas station, or a new meth lab bust.  Why do you think we see this?  Because, people are getting so desperate that they are willing to do whatever it takes to make some money.  Hell, we are even seeing prostitution busts every other week in the area.  Ten years ago this would have been shocking.  There were probably a handful of hookers, now apparently they are everywhere (although, to my knowledge, I have never seen a hooker anywhere in the Tri Cities). 

This does bring me to this quick tangent.   Where are all of these hookers?  It’s not like you can drive down the main strip in Blountville and see a woman in red fishnet stockings and a cheetah thong standing in front of Pizza Plus selling some booty.  Are they hiding?  Is there some secret brothel in the Fort Henry Mall?  Perhaps it’s in the closed off section of the old Proffit's.  I always wondered what is behind those boarded up walls and shackled doors.  Maybe it’s some wild whorehouse where all the Kingsport businessmen go and you have to know the secret password to get in.  They have even busted prostitutes in Erwin; I didn't even know that they had streets for them to hook on.  Something to wonder about, but anyway back to TN being a horrible place to make a living.

I know several recent college graduates that are well qualified, intelligent human beings who cannot find a job anywhere around here.  They scour all 5 classified ads, they search through countless job sites on the Web, and they find nothing.  They might be lucky to find a job as a waiter/waitress, but they just spent 4 years in school to become a certified youth counselor.  What are they going to do, offer advice instead of an appetizer with each meal?  My wife was lucky and happened to apply at just the right time with a company as an LPN, but half of the nursing school class that she graduated with still hasn’t found work.  We see it dramatized and made light of in movies and TV, but this often leads to people scheming for illegal ways to make money.  Look at "Weeds", it’s funny and it’s a good show but it’s really not that far-fetched.  A recently widowed mother selling weed to make ends meet?  Doesn't sound like a bad idea.  (And by the way, as I have said before, if we legalized marijuana then it would create a bevy of new legitimate jobs.  Growers, distributers, sellers, etc.)  This is why we see all of those sad, drunken, beat-up faces in the Busted! or Arrested! or whatever it’s called paper every week.  I would venture a guess that 70 to 80% (or perhaps higher) do not have a job or have had trouble finding a job.  You don't read about rich white guys knocking off the Roadrunner Market.  You don't see CEOs driving around with portable meth labs in the trunks of their Mercedes.  You don't see doctors selling sex to unhappy, married businessmen in a seedy motel.  No, people who have money or have a good job are usually focused and never think about this kind of crime.  They may think of ways of cheating people out of money by creative accounting, but never some low rent, quick money crime.  We have to find a way to make jobs, money, and happy people in TN and this is where I come in again.

1. As I have argued before, legalize marijuana.  I have stated before the potential benefits there would be tax-wise, but now I will argue from the job market point of view.  People in Tennessee already grow a lot of pot, there are plenty of people who sell pot in Tennessee, and there are a heck of a lot of people who smoke pot in Tennessee, but right now, it is 100% illegal.  Just think if it was legal.  We could see thriving farms with plenty of workers growing marijuana alongside their corn.  A farmer with a large enough crop could employee maybe 10 to 15 people to harvest and package the stuff.  After the harvest, the farmer could sell it directly to a marijuana dispensary or to a wholesaler who sold it to a dispensary.  Each dispensary would have to have several employees as would each wholesale distributor.  Over half of the people we are arresting could be gainfully employed because they do this anyway, the only difference would be that it would be legit. 
2. Clean this place up.  It's no wonder that new businesses and well-established companies don't want to come here.  There is a lot of depressing scenery around here.  I look around Kingsport and there is eye sore after eye sore of abandoned, old, decrepit buildings littering the landscape of the "city".  They all serve as a reminder of a failed dream that some businessman once had.  I know that Kingsport is trying to get rid of a lot of these places and build new businesses but they need to do more, faster.  I'm sure this sounds wasteful and pessimistic, but think about it.  You are the owner of chain of upscale restaurants and you are looking to open up a new location.  If you see all kinds of abandoned buildings of failed businesses of the past, how confident will you be about opening up in that area? 
3. Work on improving already existing businesses.  Go out and support these places, buy crap from them, quit ordering everything off the internet (unless you are ordering through Amazon and clicking through my site), and eat out every now and then.  These places have to have money to pay their employees, if you are not supporting the business then how do they pay them? 
4. Legalized prostitution.  Okay, maybe not but with as many people as there are screwing strangers they might as well make a buck.

I don't have all the answers but I do have some advice.  If you can't find a job in the field that you are qualified for or trained for, then move.  Go to a city that has what you are looking for.  Don't feel obligated to stay here just because you grew up here or you have family here.  If you have a family here, don't you think they want to see you succeed rather than crumble under the crippling job market and sell meth to feed your kids?