NPR has a news story on what it says is a shortage of apple pickers in Washington State.
The fastest workers can earn about $1,000 per week....
But the work is physically demanding. Jeff Rippon, a manager at nearby Chiawana Orchards, says pickers have to scale tall ladders and carry 40-pound sacks of apples on their chests for at least eight hours a day. He'll hire anyone who wants the work, but he says he has trouble finding enough people. So like many farmers across the country, he ends up relying on migrant workers.
"I've been picking apples since 1965 and I've never seen a white person yet pick more than an hour," Rippon says. "Seriously! By the time you get the paperwork done, they've decided it's too hard to do."
It's hard to quantify, but might this be part of the national unemployment problem? That there are some jobs, even decently paying ones, that some people have decided "it's too hard to do"?