Jobs at the TSMC semiconductor factory in Arizona could require long hours and total obedience. Americans may push back on the company's culture.

The world’s largest chipmaker promised to create thousands of US jobs. There are growing tensions over whether US workers have the skills or work ethic to do them.::Jobs at the TSMC semiconductor factory in Arizona could require long hours and total obedience. Americans may push back on the company’s culture.

  • nave@lemmy.zipEnglish
    6·
    1 year ago

    Do you have a source on that literacy rate statistic?

    Adults classified as below level 1 may be considered functionally illiterate in English: i.e., unable to successfully determine the meaning of sentences, read relatively short texts to locate a single piece of information, or complete simple forms

    Also

    However, the non-U.S. born are over-represented among such low-skilled adults. Non-U.S.-born adults comprise 34 percent of the population with low literacy skills, compared to 15 percent of the total population

    source

    • bassomitron@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      1 year ago

      From that same website you sourced:

      What are the rates of literacy in the United States?

      Four in five U.S. adults (79 percent) have English literacy skills sufficient to complete tasks that require comparing and contrasting information, paraphrasing, or making low-level inferences—literacy skills at level 2 or above in PIAAC (OECD 2013). In contrast, one in five U.S. adults (21 percent) has difficulty completing these tasks (figure 1). This translates into 43.0 million U.S. adults who possess low literacy skills: 26.5 million at level 1 and 8.4 million below level 1, while 8.2 million could not participate in PIAAC’s background survey either because of a language barrier or a cognitive or physical inability to be interviewed. These adults who were unable to participate are categorized as having low English literacy skills, as is done in international reports (OECD 2013), although no direct assessment of their skills is available.

      Even if you take away non-native English speakers based on the numbers on that website further down (which you also quote), that results in a literacy rate of 86%. My point still stands that Taiwan has a much higher literacy rate.

      Edit: formatting

        • bassomitron@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          1 year ago

          I didn’t say functionally illiterate. Having low literacy (i.e. having difficulty with level 2 or higher literacy skills) is not being fully literate, which is typically what these stats are referring to when quoting literacy rates. Ironic that we’re arguing semantics on this.