Growing gap between unemployement, employment and trained and skilled workers...

Institue of PA

Advertised job opening require more education than all existing jobs and more education than the average adult has attained;
• Metro areas vary considerably in the level of education required by job openings posted online;
• Unemployment rates are 2% higher in large metro areas with a shortage of educated workers relative to demand and have been consistently higher since before the recession;
• Declines in industry demand and housing prices explain most of the recent cyclical increases in unemployment rates, but education gaps explain most of the structural level of unemployment over the past few years; and
• Metro areas with higher education gaps have experienced lower rates of job creation and job openings over the past few years.

Here is what's essentially a dissertation on a growing trend in America with regards to employee meant shortfalls due to lack of skills.

This brings up a lot of issues not only in my area but from everywhere. I've lived all over the country and know the market well. I've worked in various different undustry from entertainment, to tech, to construction.

One if the biggest issues I see here is that the companies who need these workers no pinger train workers for these positions, most of which have traditionally been Union, or apprenticeship positions which in all reality don't require a degree but actual experience.

That's one of the biggest issues.

Second, our institutions for the most part do not offer programs for these occupations or technical skills and if they do offer certificate programs for these skills typically there is no available funding in the forms of Pel grants and other various grant programs.

So for most of the people who are willing to do this job are ones with bad credit in the first place who don't have access to the educational opportunities available. I know it's their fault but what should they do?

Let me just say this, for the sake of this thread I'm not supporting free education but I'm asking, what's another solution to this growing problem?

Should these corporations start designing apprentice programs and help foot the bill? They are the ones profiting from it after all.

In my last few threads many of these subjects were brought to light so now I've create threads to discuss the individual aspects of the birth of these ideas.

This is not an emotional argument or based on only my opinion.

There are people far more articulate then me discussing the same exact issues and they present their case from a far superior intellect then myself.

a reply to: onequestion

Most companies expect experience to be hired but refuse to train. My sister keeps getting turned down after great interviews because she lacks experience. How does one get experience if you must have it to get the job you need to get it?

These are entry level jobs she's applying for by the way. It costs money to train and with the risk of the employee leaving you might not see the return so most companies just don't train. It's pathetic selfish and short sighted but those are the traits that define modern society.

Doctors lawyers and other professional jobs get around this by requiring long periods of unpaid slave labor (internships/residencies etc.). It's basic supply and demand. The demand for jobs is higher than the supply so the suppliers dictate cost entirely.

Sadly the future of our nation is treated with the same amount of consideration as the price of milk. Sorry key me correct that. they put WAY more thought into product pricing than our nations future

a reply to: tavi45

That cycle is going to destroy them.

It's short cited and affecting the overall health of our economy. Not only that but it's destroying the quality of life in what WAS the model for success for the rest of the world.

How do we change this cultural paradigm to get everyone to think long term?

a reply to: onequestion

Let me just say this, for the sake of this thread I'm not supporting free education but I'm asking, what's another solution to this growing problem?

Do you know where these problems don't exist?

Countries with free post secondary education. Because when government or private studies show a potential decline in a certain area of the workforce, they encourage people to study in those areas, as to make sure there is no gap.

You need a skilled workforce to achieve success economically and socially, period. One of the big reasons that America was so successful post WWII is because of the GI bill and the FREE college educations those people received. That and the space race that encouraged a whole generation of kids to become scientists, engineers and academics.

The problem is that education is a for profit business in the USA. Take the profit motive out of it, and watch the system flourish.

~Tenth

It is pretty funny that I just received a diploma in my particular field. I saw an apprentice position advertised and clicked on it.

They wanted 3 years experience for an apprentice!

I'm not worried though I have a decent paying job and will eventually find a position in the field I want to be in. It just astounds me that with the knowledge I have they still only want people with experience at most places. I can assure you I know more and can do better than almost any other person they will speak to.

It is what it is though

originally posted by: tothetenthpower
a reply to: onequestion

Let me just say this, for the sake of this thread I'm not supporting free education but I'm asking, what's another solution to this growing problem?

Do you know where these problems don't exist?

Countries with free post secondary education. Because when government or private studies show a potential decline in a certain area of the workforce, they encourage people to study in those areas, as to make sure there is no gap.

You need a skilled workforce to achieve success economically and socially, period. One of the big reasons that America was so successful post WWII is because of the GI bill and the FREE college educations those people received. That and the space race that encouraged a whole generation of kids to become scientists, engineers and academics.

The problem is that education is a for profit business in the USA. Take the profit motive out of it, and watch the system flourish.

~Tenth

Thanks for the post. I completely agree and well said.

So what do you think needs to change? Just the cost, making education free?

Honestly I think it should be free or make the I stutions financially responsible for the loan itself that way they care about the quality of their program and we have a more competitive educational enviornment.

Worked as a spray painter (Self taught) for 17 years, now i need level this and level that qualifications when applying for a new job in the same field.... I dont paint no more.

a reply to: Soloprotocol

Yeah I set tile and install hardwood, I am a great tile setter and my work is clean. Hard to find a job though. And the union, well that's impossible for two more years because of my record.


Not only that but I still have to do an apprenticeship for them for something I can probably do with a higher level of skill.

a reply to: onequestion

Either you make it completely free, or offer 0% interest student loans from the government, for both school, housing etc.

Also legislate the cost of education at the university level. I'm sorry but there's no need to charge people 100 thousand dollars for 4 or 6 years of university.

It amazes me that we expect people to be good, productive members of society, yet by the time they are ready to enter the work force, they are strapped with thousands of dollars of debt, in most cases more than their parents ever had to deal with.

It's pathetic.

The economy is in part stimulated by the middle class buying big ticket items, like homes and cars etc. Most people cannot afford that anymore, because of their student loans, so they can't partake in growing the economy, so it retracts that much more.

Parts of the world understand that you can NEVER loose by educating your populace, even if it is expensive.

~Tenth

a reply to: tothetenthpower

The cost is relatively low considering the fact that we spend 17 trillion a year.

Maybe it'll help revere the trade deficit by forcing us to allocate more funds to the homeland rather then rebuilding the world.

originally posted by: onequestion
a reply to: tavi45

That cycle is going to destroy them.

How do we change this cultural paradigm to get everyone to think long term?

You kind of answered your own question.

Wait for the current system to implode.

Everything about the traditional education system, from how it is structured, to how it doesn't integrate its graduates into the workforce, to what is being taught........is failing.

If enough of the right people complain to the right people with proof of how it has been failing for years, things will get done. Especially if you throw in proof of how the system can be more profitable if certain changes are made. It shouldn't be hard to fix. Just look back to the years when it did work for us and apply the same model in every aspect of the system.

But since we've gotten into the habit of dealing with something AFTER it's broken, the system will have to totally fail before it is renovated/fixed.

Obama said the other day that he wanted to train 50,000 veterans as solar installers.

The problem is you have to be a licensed electrician in many states to install solar panels.
and most electrical licenses go to union members.

I know as i was a non union electrician off and on for 30 years in Calif and am a EX Navy electrician till 2002 when i was forced out of the trade because i was not allowed to even take the electrician license test.
Just because i could not prove i had 4000 hours of on the job training as a electrician. I have some place around 10,000 hours in the trade but could not find any of my ex-employers to sign notarizes statement of my hours.
And my navy training did not count any at all.

The only solar i can legally do is on RVs and mobile equipment.

i believe a lot of veterans will take the training and then find there is no jobs because they are not union.

a reply to: ANNED

I was in China lake a few years back what a place.

Isn't it crazy that your navy training doesn't count? Ever ask yourself why?

a reply to: onequestion


Let me just say I love your brain and how it thinks OneQuestion....I always enjoy engaging discussions with you.

Now here's my take on it.

The growing trend in America in regards to employment has been cheap labor. There is no one definitive event that caused this. You can cite Regeanomics, Clinton's NAFTA, 9/11, recession...all contribute. Fact is, Ross Periot back running for POTUS warned the people that outsourcing was going to kill the country.

I have lived all over America as well and abroad, and what I notice in America is that baby boomers are selfish and have made policies to destroy all left behind when they die off. One thing I've noticed since getting my PhD right after 9/11 was that age discrimination, educational discrimination, veteran discrimination, and discrimination against those with children were rampant. Yes, its against the law, but HR was using nefarious practices against potential employees to cut them from the list or trick them into revealing information. This became very easier with an online only practice of filling out job apps, especially now that they run background and credit checks on you for a job and HOLD that against applicants too.

This is a multifaceted issue. No company wants to train anymore because they want the top executives and shareholders to make the most money while the slave labor works for pennies. Americans overall know about labor laws; as a result the issues of discrimination I listed are used against the applicant pool. Companies have been rewarded for being cheap monarchy entities essentially. They don't want to pay for insurance for you or your brood, they don't want people smart enough to know that you can't underpay people, folks are guaranteed a lunch, folks are guaranteed paid overtime, breaks, and other legalities of being a worker. And they just don't want that world anymore. My first job was at Walgreens. I was paid 15 bucks an hour and this was the early 90s. I had health benefits. I worked overtime and was paid for it. I stocked the cooler, faced shelves, and did stocking and cashier work. I was trained to do everything in that store, including camera when back then they still developed in house. Because I was a straight A student I was offered a managerial training program upon graduating from high school, and Walgreens was willing to bring me up to corporate for the training and moving me up, and paying part for school. They wanted to "groom me". They no longer offer that anymore, nor do any other American company.

Americans allowed their young to take internships and apprenticeships for FREE and did not object. Graduates of all levels post secondary were coming out of school only being offered FREE INTERNSHIPS for six months under the premise that if they did a good job they would be hired. It was a sham. These companies had a constant rotating crop of free labor that they could discard every six months with no penalty. Then it spread to nursing, legal, and medical profession. I know lawyers that have never worked for a paycheck; they can't even take paralegal work because it is held against them if they try to get a job with a law firm.

Then we usher in the "certificate programs" right along with online learning. In a 15 year period America's government DESTROYED its own educational merit for the all mighty dollar. Now we have no on the job training, and degrees in everything you can think of as a #ing joke, all while people go into serious debt to acquire them just for a gig.

The veterans were told and are told join to get training; they get out and that training is not applicable. Most businessess will not hire vets simply off of the media campaign that they are all mental nut jobs waiting to shoot the place up.

The labor takes a hit. The immigrant illegal Mexicans are literally given all the trades with no penalty. Unions get all discombobulated either from their own greed or just trying to compete with all this slave labor. All of a sudden people who do get on and join unions as apprentices only have five years before reaching journeyman and become unemployable. Its too much illegal labor to compete with. Why pay the guy top dollar to do a good job when you are tantalized by hundred and hundreds of expendable bodies every day.

That's one of the biggest issues.

Institutions could give less than a flying fck about funding anything other than their athletic programs. FASFA is not offering scholarships and grants up the ass anymore and universities are being defunded as for profit colleges like EE Corp (who runs Art Institute) get all the carte blanche that use to be reserved for brick and mortar institutions. So the universities kill their own faculty pool; tenure is DEAD in academia, replaced by the adjuncts who only can teach one class per sememster, and because of state rules on automatically inherited tenure after two straight semesters, they switch off, one semester a year (the clock resets if you don't teach straight through). Adjunct for those not in academia is a joke. It's equivalent of being called a racial ephithet. One school can have 500 adjuncts per department in any given semester. How does that help students learn, having a turnstile of teachers that they can't even have a rapport with for the four to six years the school has them there?

While the majority of the legal citizen job pool has bad credit due to school debt and other life survival ills, they are discriminated from the job force. See aformentioned. This group, who get two to three degrees of varying levels are constantly told GO BACK TO SCHOOL AND GET MORE SKILLS. OneQuestion, let me just say that the kids born after 1975 have not been allowed to work as adults. They have been shafted and its nothing they can do. They take the debt and go to school, get real degrees, just to get out there and told "5-9 years of experience" and "internship experience not accepted". At some point you give up. I was forced into retirement before the age of 30. I have not been able to work since I was 28 years old for someone else. And at the point, I don't care. Hence my passion of leaving America.

The growing problem is being ignored because not working means no way of making a living which equates to HOMELESSNESS. There are a lot of educated and skilled people who would work out there homeless. And a lot more will experience it before its all over. Or be the working poor living in a tent city. I knew a lot of homeless people that worked full time jobs for minimum wage and in NYC or Chicago they couldn't afford rent, or were discriminated against renting because their minimum wage salary couldn't cover 25% of the rent by the standard they use for renters now. Doesn't matter than rent is inflated based on neighborhood or area.

The entire thing is to break people down into 21st century serfs, or make so much debt they have to bring back slavery (even though its back by a new name).

a reply to: onequestion


Part of the reason might be the way americans are always thinking they need to "move up"?
That "lower" positions do not pay enough to make anyone want to stay there?

This makes it unprofitable for a company to train someone, if they are just going to move on out as soon as they get the skills.

High skills and a college degree are not the free ticket to employment. The economy is so bad these days that employers don't have to train. Companies can continue advertising jobs until a perfect match is made.

Many professional jobs are so specialized that very few applicants qualify and most people applying for those jobs are highly skilled but their knowledge is generalized. This means they will require some amount of training. Therefore they are not hired.

Most employers already have the basic labor to keep things running but to innovate they need only the most talented in the positions they are advertising for. So, they can wait until a perfect match to the specialization is found.

Profit is the only thing a company is concerned about. Anything that cuts into the bottom line is avoided. Until the supply of jobs is greater than the demand for jobs nothing will change.

originally posted by: eManym
High skills and a college degree are not the free ticket to employment. The economy is so bad these days that employers don't have to train. Companies can continue advertising jobs until a perfect match is made.

Many professional jobs are so specialized that very few applicants qualify and most people applying for those jobs are highly skilled but their knowledge is generalized. This means they will require some amount of training. Therefore they are not hired.

Most employers already have the basic labor to keep things running but to innovate they need only the most talented in the positions they are advertising for. So, they can wait until a perfect match to the specialization is found.

Profit is the only thing a company is concerned about. Anything that cuts into the bottom line is avoided. Until the supply of jobs is greater than the demand for jobs nothing will change.

Before 9/11 being generalized was the norm. Having skill sets all around. Now all of a sudden "specializations" are the norm, but there is no one to fill it. I know HR people that tell me that most times they don't want to fill the positions at all. They use postings so the company can complain they need more federal breaks/tax incentives to hire more competent people.

A scam is still a scam.

originally posted by: Bluesma
a reply to: onequestion


Part of the reason might be the way americans are always thinking they need to "move up"?
That "lower" positions do not pay enough to make anyone want to stay there?

This makes it unprofitable for a company to train someone, if they are just going to move on out as soon as they get the skills.

Sometimes you have to change jobs just to stay where you are or to get a pay-rise. Many corporations and companies have policies about compulsory promotion, and promote people upwards from hands-on work to supervisory or management. Sometimes the only option is to do the job you enjoy is to change jobs or become self employed, a contractor or a freelancer. You can only do those once you have some experience.

There's also a big difference between startups (which develop new technology from scratch and hope to get bought up), and corporations (which buy out startups and integrate the technology with their own). Many people prefer to work for startups, so they hop from corporations to startups and back again.

Employers always fill the senior level jobs first, then they work down the hierarchy to the entry level positions. To make things worse, whenever there is a shortage of a particular job role, the colleges are quick to create degree courses to fill those shortages. That locks out anyone else who might consider a mid-life career change.

Eventually so many people end up competing for these positions, that the companies only offer freelance work or zero-hours contracts.

I've seen this in the UK as well - companies were advertising for internships where students could *pay* to get experience.
When the cost of living is about £20K/year, anything below that is impossible to live on.

a reply to: onequestion

I only see a lack of skilled workers for corporate employment. There is plenty of skilled labor out there, they simply work for themselves now. I only work with those that work for themselves. I own my own business as do a couple of my children, we deal with independent contract workers. And there are plenty of them.