What Are The Jobs No Americans Want?

The Job No Americans Want Isn't Getting Any Easier

Is sheepherding one of the jobs that so many Americans do not want? Or is it farm hand and seasonal picker? We keep hearing that no Americans want these jobs that are important to the American economy, but most of the jobs listed seem to be few and far between... and the jobs in the urban areas occupied by immigrants (legal and illegal) would be desired by Americans if the businesses involved paid a living wage...

Take for instance the restaurant and hotel industries. None of them treat kitchen staff (not the chefs, but those working for the chefs), bus staff or even wait staff with any respect. In the hotel industry, bell hops, room service staff and housekeeping staff are all but enslaved. But eery time we consider changing the minimum wage laws, the restaurant and hospitality industry force march their lobbyists into Gucci Gulch to assure that the "reduced wage exceptions" enjoyed by these industries is not wiped away.

Of course, our attention is brought to the plight of sheep herders, the epitome of an up and coming area of employment!

The seven sheepherders were eating lunch in a trailer with no toilet, heat or water, its leaky roof held down by a rope.

A lunch break, especially one together, was a rare event. But they were celebrating, sort of. Lambing season was ending. That's when the ewes give birth and the sheepherders who come to this country on three-year work visas put in their hardest 12- to 16-hour days, seven days a week.

Still, the sheepherders were steeling themselves for spring. From late March until fall, sheepherding is almost unbearably lonely. Each herder is driven deep into pastures far from town or even a paved road. For weeks on end, he sees no one but the boss, and rarely does he have a cellphone or radio.

In the list of jobs immigrants perform that no U.S. citizen wants, sheepherding must rank near the top. The 825 or so sheepherders who work the nation's sheep farms -- mostly in California, Texas and Wyoming -- are immigrants here on H-2A visas from Peru, Chile, Bolivia and Mexico, according to the Western Range Association, an industry group.

Their lot was supposed to change, at least in California. In 2001, the state legislature passed a law imposing new labor standards for sheepherders. They were to have adequate housing, with toilets, heat and potable water. They were to get graduated raises, from $800 to $1,300 a month at present, and they were to get vacation. But in March 2005, a report by Central California Legal Services, a Fresno-based legal aid group, found that little had changed.

Chris A. Schneider, executive director of Central California Legal Services, began monitoring the sheep ranches in 1990. He wrote his first comprehensive report on the sheepherders' plight in 2000, after unsuccessfully trying to get federal minimum wage laws to apply to herding.