Does a Skills Gap Contribute to Unemployment?

I was reading a NYTimes OpEd debate about the employment skills gap and the response from Peter Cappelli at the Wharton School of Business really nailed it:
Does a Skills Gap Contribute to Unemployment? - Room for Debate - NYTimes.com

Have you tried raising wages? If you could get what you want by paying more, the problem is just that you are cheap. The fact that I cannot find the car I want at the price I want to pay does not constitute a car shortage, yet a large number of employers claiming they face a skills shortage admit that the problem is getting candidates to accept their wage rates.

If There's a Skills Gap, Blame It on the Employer - Room for Debate - NYTimes.com

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Comments

tpatt100

I need to find the article I read recently on the WSJ or Forbes that said employers are hesitant to train and with IT and the average term of employment being three years I can kind of agree with that.

For the last few years the US is not even producing enough jobs to satisfy population growth and employers are having a wide selection of candidates with a decent amount of experience it is hard for college graduates to get a foot in the door.

Then you have to look at finding workers even capable of learning what is required to do a particular job. I read an article where auto plants in the south had to use pictures in manuals because so many workers could not even read.

the_Grinch

I don't think it is so much a skills gap, it is more of a we're combining several positions into one and want a lot of skills. A lot of system admin jobs I am seeing aren't asking just for you to work on the servers, but the network and the phones as well. Add to that the fact that they don't make the salary on par with the job skills requested and of course they aren't finding people. Finally, the reason people are leaving companies so quickly is two fold. Raises aren't on par with inflation (if you get one at all) and there is no company loyalty. No reinvestment in the worker, no incentives other then "be happy you have a job", and a lot of work places just aren't plain friendly. Perfect storm of not finding and losing workers.

gadav478

the_Grinch wrote: »

I don't think it is so much a skills gap, it is more of a we're combining several positions into one and want a lot of skills. A lot of system admin jobs I am seeing aren't asking just for you to work on the servers, but the network and the phones as well. .

^+1 That's not just the IT world, that's why the world of employment in general; they tire us out over time, and question as to why we OVERSLEEP lol...

N2IT

This is a fantastic article.

Thanks for sharing Clay

tpatt100

My wife is working non stop because the university doesn't want to replace people who quit. The problem is if you manage to keep up they won't hire anybody. They finally hired some new people but these were former Borders managers who took big pay cuts and wanted the university benefits.

ptilsen

The article succinctly sums up four different, but related problems in the country as a whole.

1. Everyone is underpaid. Everyone. Everyone. No, not Josh, our resident PFE who makes six figures and then some and goes by Everyone, but pretty much everyone else. Would you work at McDonald's for, well, anything? Forget minimum wage. Even entry-level retail and food service jobs are underpaid. Talk to bank tellers and bankers, to retail associates at department stores, to anyone who works in any kind of call center. Expectations are high and incentives are low. Talk to motel and hotel managers who make $30-$45K but are expected to more or less live at their property (60-90 hour works weeks) without actually living at their property (they have to pay out of their salary to do so). Money's nice, but people have to have reasonable incentive to have the skills employers are asking for. I occasionally get recruiters send my job opportunities for entry-level computer tech/DST positions paying $10/hour and requiring A+ and experience. Bank tellers make more than that and complain about it. It's absurd. I see so many companies accept the huge costs of turnover and unfilled positions just because the status quo is to nickle-and-dime employees.

2. Once again, employers want so much and provide so little. As so many of us recommend on this site, we all but entirely ignore job "requirements" on many job ads because they're absurd. Employers want deep skill and experience in so many areas, when really all that should be required is aptitude. The problem is particularly bad in IT, but it's present in many other fields.

3. Training is a risk, sure, but as the article points out, is the risk really worth the cost of not filling the position? Schools are never going to teach all the skills most employers in most industries want. The key to successfully filling positions with the right candidates is to know what qualifications are truly needed and have good programs in place to train for the rest.

4. There seems to be a huge, just enormous disconnect between education and industry. I would contend that most programs do not teach what employers want. In my experience, even "career colleges" and technical/vocational schools aren't actually teaching all that's needed, in many cases. IT is a great example because education has responded in the last ten years to some of the demands for degrees more focused on infrastructure and management skills, as opposed to computer science. However, most infrastructure and management programs still don't teach the skills needed to be useful in an entry-level position. While a college degree is nice and can show some aptitude and knowledge, it's often more sensible to hire anyone with an A+ and basic computer skills for entry-level positions over college grads with good degrees, because at least the former can fix computers without much or any additional training.