Mad Skillz Might Not Be Enuff

Filed in National by on December 28, 2010

With unemployment so high for so long, why is it that people are having a hard time find jobs? One argument summed up in The New Yorker states that the unemployed just don’t have the skills in demand.

. . . a big part of the problem is a mismatch between the jobs that are available and the skills that people have. According to this view, many of the jobs that existed before the recession (in home building, for example) are gone for good, and the people who held those jobs don’t have the skills needed to work in other fields. A big chunk of current unemployment, the argument goes, is therefore structural, not cyclical: resurgent demand won’t make it go away.

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  1. anon says:
    December 28, 2010 at 12:32 pm

    a mismatch between the jobs that are available and the skills that people have

    This is always the excuse to justify cheap-labor policies. A healthy economy includes jobs for lower skills. A marginal economy directs scarce resources to the wealthy.

    It’s not that Americans don’t have skills; it’s that our foreign competitors now have the same skills, and they work for less. US companies receive and reject plenty of qualified resumes for each job opening. They don’t even evaluate them properly before rejecting them, because they aren’t really serious about hiring Americans.

    Apparently the missing skill they are looking for is a willingness to work for substandard wages.

    The stimulus created lots of jobs – 2.4 million last year alone:

    All but 4 percent of the top 500 U.S. corporations reported profits this year, and the stock market is close to its highest point since the 2008 financial meltdown.

    But the jobs are going elsewhere. The Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think tank, says American companies have created 1.4 million jobs overseas this year, compared with less than 1 million in the U.S. The additional 1.4 million jobs would have lowered the U.S. unemployment rate to 8.9 percent, says Robert Scott, the institute’s senior international economist.

    many of the jobs that existed before the recession (in home building, for example) are gone for good

    What – people don’t need homes anymore?

  2. anon says:
    December 28, 2010 at 12:47 pm

    OK, so we’ve got 15 million unemployed Americans, and:

    – 1.4 million jobs going overseas,
    – Up to 12 million illegal immigrants holding US jobs, and
    – 85K high-tech H1-B jobs every year

    The solutions kind of write themselves, don’t they?

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