The biggest problem in the labor market is not a skills shortage; rather, it is a persistently weak economy where businesses do not have sufficient demand to justify adding employees. In addition, when there are many more applicants than jobs, employers tend to impose overexacting criteria and then wait for the perfect match. They also offer tightfisted pay packages. What employers describe as talent shortages are often failures to agree on salary. If a business really needed workers, it would pay up. That is not happening, which calls into question the existence of a skills gap as well as the urgency on the part of employers to fill their openings. [Having been unemployed once, during a smaller recession, I cannot enumerate the times I responded to job ads, and was told they werent actually hiring at this time, but collecting applications to keep on file. I stopped counting at seven, but I swear they all used those exact words. (Kind of like the way retail clerks, at different chains, now ask if you want your receipt with you, or in the bag. It seems to have become an essential part of retail clerk training.) Naturally, I took the time to fill them out anyway, and naturally, I never went to work for any of them.] Corporate executives have valuable perspectives on the economy, [Or so we are all lead to believe, as they, and their cronies on the Boards, seek to justify their gargantuan pay packages.] but they also have an interest in promoting the notion of a skills gap. They want schools and, by extension, the government [By further extension, State and local tax payers, as locally supported school districts account for two thirds of ALL government spending, including national defense. And this article doesnt even begin consider the agendas of those corporations which have conceived an interest in harvesting this public money themselves. They have an even greater incentive to promote fictional belief in a skills gap, and to denigrate public education.] to take on more of the costs of training workers that used to be covered by companies as part of on-the-job employee development. They also want more immigration, both low and high skilled, because immigrants may be willing to work for less than their American counterparts.
Posted on: Sat, 30 Aug 2014 15:48:16 +0000
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