North of 8 - 5/21/2021 7:43 AM

An additional problem for some companies is that the average American youth today is not capable of hard physical labor. Just listened to a story on NPR about some Army recruiters who are so desperate for recruits that meet the minimum physical requirements they are setting up informal "fat camps" outside of normal office hours. They provide nutrition advice, put volunteers through an exercise program, etc.
In the last two years I have had a couple of older contractors tell me that so many young guys want to work in housing construction or road construction but they can't cut it physically. I mentioned it to my son who is a physical education teacher and he said he could see that. 10 years ago while in college he took a human anatomy class and the professor showed them a report on how autopsy's of young car crash victims showed levels of plaque in arteries of guys in their late teens and early 20s that would have been seen in 50, 60 year olds in the past.
The summer I turned 18, I quit my school year job of stocking shelves in a grocery store and went to work on road construction, pulling 60' steel rebar 12 to 16 hours a day. A pair of leather work gloves would last no more than 2 days, if you were lucky. They liked hiring young guys for that kind of stuff because we were assumed to be strong and flexible and the older union guys wanted nothing to do with it. Apparently playing video games in your teens does not prepare you for that kind of work.