Unskilled labor as an important resource

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In the video

Guatemala’s Poorest Region: Life of the Q’eqchi Mayans

a lady says that the wage for men in her area is $5/day for men and $3/day for women. She is asked: How long is a working day? Answer: 12 hours. She said that everyone would like to go up to the United States and many have.

If it were you, if you were one of them, what would you do? How would you feel?

Guatemala has 22 indigenous Indian tribes, each speaking its own language, and these tribes make up 40 - 45% of Guatemala’s population. Spanish is the official language of Guatemala and schools are taught in Spanish.

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According to ChatGPT:

School attendance in Guatemala (approximate)

Primary school enrollment (Grades 1–6):

● Starts high (around 90% in Grade 1)

● By Grade 3, enrollment has already dropped noticeably

Students who continue past Grade 3:

● Roughly 55–60% of children make it beyond 3rd grade

Completion of primary school (Grade 6):

● Only about 45–50% of children finish primary school

Lower secondary school (middle school):

● Drops further to 35–40%

● In rural and Indigenous areas, often below 30%

Who is most affected?

Children are least likely to continue past Grade 3 if they are:

● From rural areas

● Indigenous (especially Mayan communities)

● Girls in poorer households

● From families relying on child labor (agriculture, markets, domestic work)

Why so many leave school early

Common reasons children stop attending after Grade 3:

● Poverty and need to work

● Long walking distances to school

● Instruction only in Spanish (many children speak Indigenous languages)

● Poor school quality and overcrowding

● Malnutrition affecting learning

● Early marriage (especially for girls)

In raw numbers (rough estimate)

Guatemala has about 5 million school-age children:

● Roughly 2.5–3 million continue beyond Grade 3

● About 2 million do not

ChatGpt question:

What percentage of Guatemala's indigenous Indian children go past 3rd grade in school?

Answer.

Best estimates (based on UNESCO, World Bank, and Guatemalan Ministry of Education data)

● Roughly 35–45% of indigenous children complete 3rd grade

● Only about 25–30% go beyond 3rd grade

● Fewer than 15–20% complete primary school (6th grade)

In rural, heavily indigenous areas, the numbers are often lower than the national average.

Why the drop happens so early

Several overlapping factors push children out of school around grades 2–3:

● Language barriers

Many indigenous children speak Mayan languages at home, while instruction is often in Spanish only.

● Poverty and child labor

Children are needed for farm work, household labor, or income.

● School access

Rural schools may only offer grades 1–3 locally.

● Malnutrition

Chronic malnutrition affects concentration and learning; Guatemala has one of the highest rates in the world among indigenous children.

● Discrimination and low expectations

Indigenous students often face systemic bias within the education system.

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Using my intuition, reason and knowledge of some statistics allow me to make some guesses concerning the children growing up in the indigenous mountain villages. The vast majority of them probably manage to learn the letters in school and not much more. You can’t expect much from children being taught in a language they don’t know (i.e. Spanish). Thus the schooling is probably mostly a farce. Then when the children get up to the teenage years the young girls start having babies out of wedlock (statistics tell us that up around 60 - 80% of births in Latin American countries are illegitimate). So when the young girls get up to the teenage years they start popping out a baby every year. A large portion of the young boys probably go to the city and end up joining some criminal gang or else going up to the United States to look for work. [A positive note is that around 40% to 50% of the people in these indigenous villages have turned to evangelicalism (mostly Pentecostalism) in the last 50 years and Pentecostalism is conservative in its outlooks and values.]

I would say that you have similar situations in most of Central and South America. Latin America is thus a very important source of unskilled labor for many businesses in both Latin America and the United States. There are a great many businesses that depend on unskilled labor for their operation.

Examples.

● Giant conglomerates such as the former United Fruit Company with vast plantations in Central America growing bananas, sugar cane, coffee and other things

● Factories in the United States manufacturing everything from automobiles to refrigerators

● Meat packing plants

● Growers of apples, oranges, and other fruit and produce in the USA

For a great many business people large pools of unskilled labor is a very important and jealously protected resource. And the larger the pool of unskilled labor, the better. What they want is a large oversupply of unskilled labor. Why? The answer comes down to the Law of Supply and Demand. If there is a big oversupply, they can set the wages, hire the labor cheap. See The Law of Supply and Demand . It is about competing in a very competitive world. If there is a shortage of unskilled labor and they have to pay high prices for the labor they need, they may not be able to compete in the market place. If they have to use expensive labor it might push the price of their product so high that no one would buy it. Thus they exert great pressure on politicians to not do anything that would reduce the pool of unskilled labor.

I would say that this is the reason there are so many illegals up in this country. Large numbers of illegal, unskilled Latins in this country may not be to the liking of unskilled, unemployed Americans but it is to the liking of large numbers of Americans with businesses (such factory owners and growers of apples, peaches, lettuce, and oranges). And this is the reason the problem of illegal immigrants here in the US never gets fixed. It doesn’t get fixed, not because it couldn’t be fixed, but because powerful people with strong influence with legislators don’t want it fixed. It is one of those unspoken facts of life.

This is also the reason so many owners of factories in the United States moved their factories to China and other countries of southeast Asia. They were drawn to the large pools of relatively well educated, hardworking, teachable, and cheap labor there.

I would say that one of the most fundamental of facts about this world is that it is a competitive world. It is true in the world of animals and in the human world. Money, affluence and success in life usually come down to getting an edge over your fellow man in some way and using it — as through a superior education, special skills, or some other means. Young people are told to get a special college degree, get special skills, etc. but if everyone gets the important special degree, the important skills, etc then everyone is suddenly on the same plane and no one has an edge over others.

In China the youth was told that the secret to success was getting a college degree but after they got the degree there were a hundred people applying for every job.

31 Jan 2026