"Don’t Blame the Work Force"

[applegrove]

Don’t Blame the Work Force

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD at the New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/16/opinion/sunday/dont-blame-the-work-force.html?_r=0

"SNIP..........................


THE RESEARCH Peter Cappelli, a professor of management at the Wharton School, has noted sharply different opinions between corporate executives, who typically say that schools are failing to give workers the skills they need, and the people who actually do the hiring, who say the real obstacles are traditional ones like lack of on-the-job experience. 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. Research from the National Bureau of Economic Research found that “recruiting intensity” — that is, business efforts to fill job openings — has been low in this recovery. Employers may be posting openings, but they are not trying all that hard to fill them, say, by increasing job ads or offering better pay packages.

Corporate executives have valuable perspectives on the economy, but they also have an interest in promoting the notion of a skills gap. They want schools and, by extension, the government 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.

There are many reasons to improve education, to welcome immigrants and to advance other policies aimed at transforming the work force and society. But a skills gap is not among them. Meeting today’s job challenges requires action to improve both the economy and pay, including government measures to create jobs, strengthen health and retirement systems, and raise the minimum wage. Fretting about a skills gap that does not exist will not help.


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[Egalitarian Thug]

1. Take on more of the costs? I haven't seen any meaningful training in the private sector in a decade.

Whenever the executives decide they need bigger bonuses, the first thing cut is training (right after they make their soon-to-be-unemployed workers train their replacements).
& R

[Initech]

2. It's all about that precious precious profit.

And businesses today are going after that precious profit the way Gollum chases after his precious. Which means we suffer.

[antigop]

3. DLC/Third Way Hillary and the corporate Dems are part of the problem

Hillary Clinton reaffirms support for more H-1B visas

...still waiting for her to tell laid off engineers and IT people exactly what they are supposed to train for after their jobs are outsourced or replaced by an h1-b visa holder.