An Inconvenient Truth Behind Unemployment At a recent dinner in Washington, D.C., with representatives from major American manufacturing companies, I listened as the talk turned to how hard it is to find qualified applicants for jobs. What exactly are the skills you cant find? I asked, imagining that openings for high-tech positions went begging because, as we hear so often, the training of the U.S. workforce doesnt match up well with current corporate needs. One of the representatives looked sheepishly around the room and responded: To be perfectly honest . . . we have a hard time finding people who can pass the drug test.... Employers also mention a lack of elementary command of the English language. A survey in April of human-resources professionals conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management and the AARP compared the skills gap between older workers who were nearing retirement and younger workers coming into the labor pool. More than half of the organizations surveyed reported that simple grammar and spelling were the top basic skills among older workers that are not readily present among younger workers. The SHRM/AARP survey also found that professionalism or work ethic is the top applied skill that younger workers lack. This finding is bolstered by the Empire Manufacturing Survey for April, published by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. It said that manufacturers were finding it harder to find punctual, reliable workers today than in 2007, an interesting result given that New York States unemployment rate was more than 4 percentage points lower in early 2007 than in early 2012.. online.wsj/news/articles/SB10000872396390444517304577653383308386956
Posted on: Sun, 04 May 2014 16:21:14 +0000
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