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Alleged ‘Skills Gap’ Takes Spotlight Off Who’s to Blame for Massive Jobs Shortage
Lately, the usual stream of stories about America’s jobs crisis has been displaced by a story about the shortage of crucial skills among the jobless.
"In short," writes Bybee, "the Education, Training and Skills "frame” on our economic problems plays several useful functions for the CEOs and the rest of the richest 1 percent. It takes the spotlight off CEOs' decisions to wipe out decent-paying job opportunities." This new narrative—fed by new studies from corporate sources like Deloitte & Touche—has seemingly displaced information about the plight of the unemployed. Suddenly, stories about the unemployed—except for jobless college graduates who are carrying part of the country's $1 trillion in outstanding student debt—have virtually disappeared from the mainstream media.
What’s happening to the growing numbers of “99-ers,” people whose unemployment benefits have expired? How are families and communities coping with a rising tide of mortgage foreclosures—that, as GOP presidential hopeful Michelle Bachmann of all people reminded us—painfully force families from the security of their “nests”?
Worry not, a new hook for economic coverage has arrived. A major study on the perils posed by the "skill gap" to our economy warns:
American manufacturing companies cannot fill up to 600,000 skilled positions, even as unemployment numbers hover at historic levels, according to a survey released Monday from Deloitte & Touche and The Manufacturing Institute.
…Some companies are not bidding for projects because they lack skilled manpower to do the work, according to Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce.
It's the "jobs paradox," said WMC President and CEO Kurt Bauer.
"We have high unemployment, yet companies can't find the skilled help they need," he said.
Another report from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce National Chamber Foundation and Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce received prominent play in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, as have a number of other recent stories on the predicted shortage of skilled workers looming soon in Wisconsin’s future:
The report also warns that the state's workforce is aging, an ominous sign for a labor market that faces an ongoing shortage of skilled workers.
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman quotes the CEO of Caterpillar about the dangers of inadequate education in what Friedman calls “The Age of Austerity”:
Doug Oberhelman, the C.E.O. of Caterpillar, which is based in Illinois, was quoted in Crain’s Chicago Business on Sept. 13 as saying: “We cannot find qualified hourly production people, and, for that matter, many technical, engineering service technicians, and even welders, and it is hurting our manufacturing base in the United States. The education system in the United States basically has failed them, and we have to retrain every person we hire.”
The highly influential Fareed Zakaria, columnist, TV host and "apostle of globalization..., who has long argued that free trade and globalization are win-win propositions and good for America, now argues that while globalization has been good for American companies, the way it has been operating has not been so good for American workers and job creation,” notes former globalization enthusiast Clyde Prestowitz. Prestowitz goes on to point out:
Astoundingly, Zakaria says this is because the U.S. workforce is not well enough educated. He quotes Pimco bond fund founder Bill Gross as saying that: "Our labor force is too expensive and poorly educated for today's market place."
One could easily conclude from these stories and accompanying headlines that a substantial part of America’s unemployment problem is caused by jobless workers’ individual failures to update their skills.
Further, the public schools and the unionized teachers—under attack not just from Republicans like Scott Walker, but also Education Secretary Arne Duncan (see here, and here) and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel (see here and here)—have been failing to properly provide 21st century skills to their students.
Perhaps far too much attention has been devoted to the government role in job creation and retention, when American CEOs need to demand more from their employees and from the U.S. educational system to solve the jobless problem over the long term, this narrative suggests.
But in reality, this whole “Education, Training, and Skills” narrative serves to divert attention from the massive shortage of jobs and Corporate America's misdeeds to “failing” teachers and supposedly under-educated workers. Corporate America has failed to produce virtually any net gain in U.S. jobs since 1999; the period was the only decade when U.S. employment grew by less than 20 percent.
In short, the Education, Training and Skills "frame” on our economic problems plays several useful functions for the CEOs and the rest of the richest 1 percent. It takes the spotlight off CEOs' decisions to wipe out decent-paying job opportunities. As Gordon Lafer writes in The Training Charade,
Workers are encouraged not to blame corporate profits, the export of jobs aboard, or eroding wage standards—that is, anything that they can fight—but rather to look inward for the source of their misfortune and the seeds of their resurrection.
It also distracts from a few other things:
THE PROBLEM IS MICROSCOPIC
With 15 million Americans officially unemployed (the number rises to about 25 million when you include the discouraged jobless and those involuntarily working part-time), the relative number of positions going unfilled is infinitesimal in comparison. Just 5 percent of all current manufacturing jobs are unfilled due to a lack of qualified applicants.
Conceivably, a firm commitment by Corporate America and the federal government to maintaining and expanding America’s industrial base, accompanied by an equitable sharing of the massive productivity gains accruing almost solely to corporations, would make work in skilled manufacturing once again attractive. But as illustrated by the direction of leading corporations like General Electric, major firms seem less committed than ever to keeping their manufacturing production in the US. Moreover, leading figures in both political parties resist the notion of an “industrial policy” to foster U.S. manufacturing, as economist Jeff Faux has emphasized.
THE LIMITED VALUE OF TRAINING
When displaced workers successfully complete retraining programs, they are generally unable to find jobs comparable in pay and benefits to the ones they lost. "Out of a hundred laid-off workers," says New York Times economics writer Louis Uchitelle in his book The Disposable American: Layoffs and Their Consequences, "27 are making their old salary again, or more, and 73 are making less, or not working at all."
COMPANIES DON'T WANT TO PAY FOR BETTER SCHOOLS
CEOs like Caterpillar’s Oberhelmer feel free to demand that our schools produce well-trained workers. However, corporations like Caterpillar and GE are unwilling to pay the taxes necessary to support quality education for all children. These and other corporations have skillfully avoided paying any federal taxes in some years, and paying minimal taxes in others.
Caterpillar’s Oberhelmer used a frequent corporate ploy in response to tax increases in Illinois. Despite massive increases in profits for the Peoria-based firm, he sent a letter to Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn with a thinly-veiled threat to relocate the corporate headquarters because of a 2 percent tax increase for wealth executives.
Without corporations paying their fair share of taxes, how can they expect a top-notch workforce?
Let us be clear: more education, training, and skills for the unemployed will not produce job opportunities when Corporate America is unwilling to invest in new U.S. jobs, despite the deceptive arguments presented by corporations and allies like Friedman and Zakaria. Nor will public education be able to improve for the children of poor and working-class children when corporations like General Electric and Caterpillar use blackmail threats of relocation to reduce their taxes.
Lafer offers a cold splash of reality on the whole Education, Skills, and Training charade:
Whatever the problem, it seems job training is the answer. The only trouble is, it doesn't work, and the government knows it. . . . Indeed, in studying more than 40 years of job training policy, I have not seen one program that, on average, enabled its participants to earn their way out of poverty.
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Show AllCheck out " the first official data on 2010 ... figures from payroll taxes reported to the Social Security Administration on jobs and pay are, in a word, awful." with nice chart at http://blogs.reuters.com/david-cay-johnston/2011/10/19/first-look-at-us-pay-data-its-awful/
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really? I had no problem with copy, paste and go..
He had another good article the other day too http://blogs.reuters.com/david-cay-johnston/2011/10/17/pipeline-profiteering/
All these countries with their highly educated labor pools...what have they invented? China invented gunpowder, but what have they invented lately? India...what's their latest invention? Their superior parenting and educating how has it advanced mankind in the last 300 years? Cheaper Xmas and Mardi Gras doodas? Maybe the fact that their pet food poisoned so many of our pets, while we paid premium prices for it?
"All these countries with their highly educated labor pools...what have they invented?"
The "knockoff"...
What a crock. It's like when I was on Unemployment and forced to attend a "workshop" for "job training." What the workshop consisted of was watching insulting videos that had people talking about how much better it was to be off "welfare" and have a job, and giving advice such as "be sure to take a shower and use deodorant before your job interview." The majority of people attending the workshop were age 40+, and some of us had degrees and had lost our jobs due to budget cuts.
Imagine how much the producer of that video got paid for that rubbish. It's like telling the Occupy Wall St. folks they should wear suits and ties if they want to be taken seriously. It's time we called a "crock" a "crock"!
"Meanwhile, nations like China and India realized that with some changes of their own, they could compete in this new world. And so they started educating their children earlier and longer, with greater emphasis on math and science. They're investing in research and new technologies. Just recently, China became the home to the world's largest private solar research facility, and the world's fastest computer."
http://www.npr.org/2011/01/26/133224933/transcript-obamas-state-of-union-address
What innovations have China and India been responsible for, that industry didn't facilitate with government subsidisies.
Why when the president of the United States made this comment didn't one media outlet or person question this premise? Wake up folks!
How many "uneducated", "unskilled' Americans have to train their foreign replacements, before someone wises up to the lie?
All of them apparently.
When one uses the word “corporation”, it is very important to clarify that you refer to a tiny, not-necessarily-US-national, minority of demographically identical 'people-with-pulses' who populate the inter-locking boardrooms and corner offices operating behind the fascade of "corporation".
(That's the nice way to say it...insert "sociopaths" and "Anti-Christ" in the appropriate spaces, for the juicy version.)
Seriously, each time we fail to make that distinction, we re-enforce the fiction of corporate personhood. 'We' are up against a flesh-and-blood global oligarchy using the "corporation" as a front to concentrate wealth and power in ways that will result in the destruction, of not only society and all that's been accomplished, but also, the ecosystem itself.
We are in a struggle for survival.
As someone has observed there are plenty of jobs which explains why so many people have 2 or 3 jobs.
Corporate media outlets are merely "paving the way" prior to Caterpillar's announcement that the company will be moving the bulk of their manufacturing facilities out of the U.S. and into Colombia.
You had to be blind not to see this coming.
Exactly.
This is what the companies mean when they claim there a skilled worker shortage.
There are NOT enough entry level workers, to fill the job positions that require 20 + years of on the job training and experience. They want a "Bob" out of some training school and willing to work at an entry level wage for the next decade (in the hopes of moving up) to be able to do the same work as a "Sue" who worked at the firm 30 years, has a wealth of experience and skills but demands a higher wage.
When "Bob" gets that 10 years experience and feels he can demand a higher wage, they will want to replace "Bob" with the same skill set "Mike" fresh out of school.
There are plenty of those skilled workers around. There are just not enough that the Firms can find that will work for 10 bucks an hour with a 60 hr workweek and no vacation.
"and we have to retrain every person we hire.”
Merkans are unskilled because of several issues. First, Merka could not let the needs of people stand in the way of mechanization, and the concentration of intellectual property, and the means of production, in the hands of the few.
Second, Merka had to build its empire which requires alienating Merkans from the rest of the world, so alienating Merkans from common sense wisdom of the ages, e.g. local control of production/policy. This also helps keep Merkans dependent on Merka, so Merka can have its way with them.
Also, Merka had to make a profit in any way possible, without the needs of people standing in the way, so Merka had to turn Merkans into convenience junkies, so that the more conveniences they consumed, the less work they wanted to do.
Better to move Merkans back to localism, where they participate actively in ownership/control of production and policy.
Who would believe anything coming from a bunch named Toilette and Douche? I'm one of the lucky few who have a trade still in demand today, at least currently. I'm working for a Japanese company making the air intake bodies and tubes for Honda and Toyota. Things aren't quite as rosy as all that, but at least I'm bringing home a paycheck every two weeks and I have insurance. I really feel for some of those trying to hang onto their homes or provide for a family. I feel a great deal of disgust for the Teabaggers making light of the economic woes brought down on us by years of inept governance. That's where the 'skills gap' is. Politicians who try to set us against each other while they steal from us.
why would anyone want to train for a job in a field that will soon evaporate? better to go where a job might be around for awhile (like health care). manufacturing is going away and won't be back for 20 years (if things stay the same). it will take that long for wages to rise in Asia and living standards to decline here to make it "profitable" to manufacture here. unless the corporations figure out how to exploit africa more cheaply than here at that time.
tax the rich
occupy!
Get into FARMING! With food prices on the rise constantly, and with food shortages all over the world, why aren't more people suggesting this as a REAL and NATURAL livelihood?
There's plenty of land available for not much money beyond metropolitan areas. Here on the North Coast of Maine, you can get (not shorefront) an actual livable house with a bit of land so you can grow a decent garden for under $50,000, or a bit nicer for under $75,000.
This country, especially the long-winter Northeast, needs tens of thousands more small, diversified, organic farmers (of which I am one). The demand is huge; the supply is tiny.
Great way to live, guaranteed livelihood since everyone has to eat, and wonderful community of fellow organic growers (see http://www.mofga.org ), as well as a productive, satisfying lifestyle in which to raise a family.
Start small. Wherever you live, you'd best begin to grow some of your own food. Go to your local city council and get them to commit to permitting community gardens in local parks, OR get/make some bottomless wooden (not treated) boxes, fill with good (not sewer sludge - check labels - "biomass" usually equals city sewer sludge) soil, plant seeds, weed, harvest. There, you're a food grower.
When you get a bit of practice - one season should do it plus lots of book reading on growing food organically (see Rodale Books, for one) - You're ready to tackle a larger garden or tiny/small farm.
This is critical to our survival, People. If we keep depending on food from far-away, when transport gets too expensive or simply stops, you will be out of food, out of luck because other growers will keep what they need and likely not have enough to share with you grasshoppers.
Order seed catalogs - you can do this now, catalogs come out soon - from http://www.fedcoseeds.com (a co-op so this is my favorite, plus lots of organics), http://www.johnnysseeds.com, or http://www.superseeds.com (Pine Tree Seeds), or another seed supplier that carries some organic seeds and which pledges to sell no genetically-engineered seeds.
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Take this seriously!
The 'cannot find qualified dometic workers' argument is self serving BS for a more basic reason - corporate grifters like MicroSoft cry this song so they can get H1-B visas for [cheap] foreign workers -- computer programmer's for example... If, for some strange reason, they cannot export the job to asia, they use this excuse to import (legally) the asian worker to do the job extra cheap here. No stone left unturned to squeeze out the last dime - domestic workers and the national economy be damned.
After 9/11, it became hard for MS to get super smart technical people imported from places like Pakistan, so they open shop in the Vancouver BC area -- a stone's throw from Seattle because Canada would still let these workers in - these corporations will go to unbelievable lengths to cheat their own society - pure psychopathy.
Yes, No stone left unturned to squeeze out the last dime - domestic workers and the national economy be damned. The sole legal, religious and moral purpose of large corporations was profit for its shareholders.
It's been that way for at least the last 40 years only the people who got left out weren't in the mostly white, (at least nominally) Christian middle class of which I'm a member.
Globalization has changed things and once-upon-a-time national US companies have become transnational and hire workers wherever ever yields the most profit. It's simply a business decision.
Skills gap my ASS...I worked for one of those fed jobs programs for four years. They spend their time trying to get a 75 yr old men with a master's degree in engineering to learn how to use a computer and do lots of job applications for non-existent jobs, when all he really wants to do is clean the tables at the soup kitchen his allotted 20 hours a week for a few months so he can cover the cost of fixing his car....because he lives in it. Ya, great programs...bull sh...joke of a program all.
As for no jobs...there is only ONE thing to blame and it has everything to do with lack of skills...the morons who made NAFTA happen. What a bunch of dumbassess...and it was the push from the repugnant whorporates that did it, your right- wing- nut- let's- make- more- money assholes. They are obviously poorly skilled in what makes a country strong. So why are they running this government?
Obviously Bill Maher didn't read this article before his show last night.
"We have high unemployment, yet companies can't find the skilled help they need," he said.
Yep. That's the new mantra. Anyone out there looking for a job knows what the reality is. They want one individual to do the job of three. And not of three people but from three different occupations/professions with three complete different skills sets. In exchange, they want to pay...well, nothing or next to it. When they can't find that person that doesn't exist, they recycle the job ad nauseum because, somehow, they will find that person somehow. Eventually, they give up and declare that "there are no skilled people to fill the position." No shit, Sherlock! I can fill up pages with personal stories that exemplify this. And they run the gamut from the ridiculous to the sublime.
It's a ruse. We've been here before. Corporate America will lament the "fact" that nobody in the U.S. possesses the skills to do the job. They then lobby to bring in people from India or China that are already "trained". They do provide the OJT for these "skilled" workers. Then they will say, well we just can't hire enough workers and import them so we'll just send our newly trained Indian staff back home as facilitators in our new factory in India. At the same time they are lobbying to get their relocation costs back in the form of tax deductions.
We have a working program Google Job Corps Success Stories.
What we need to do is create a partnership where industries and corporations tell us what kind of expertise they need and we will train them if they agree to hire them. They can even participate in the training for specific skills required for their organization. There are all kinds of additional benefits to this as well, but the bottom line is that we can provide skilled workers with an existing proven program.