Even better yet, see Impending Crisis: Too Many Jobs, Too Few People, by Roger Herman:
There’s a dangerously growing shortage of skilled workers to fill jobs. Projections from the Bureau of Labor Statistics forecast a shortage of skilled 10,033,000 workers by 2010. And this shortage is simply raw numbers; it doesn’t fully address the growing skills gap. The numbers also don’t take into account the changing attitudes in the workforce.Even Monster.com has a nice report on the same 'problem'This crisis is just around the corner. Trends are converging to create an unprecedented dilemma for employers throughout the free world. Because so few corporate leaders are fully aware of their predicament, executives who do prepare for the new operating environment will lead their organizations to a bright future; those who ignore the threat risk dangerous vulnerability.
Education crucial to coming job crisis.
(BUSINESS)(Column) Jim Barlow.
In just eight years, by 2010, there will be 58 million job openings in this country, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The bureau, part of the U.S. Labor Department, figures between now and 2010 some 22 million new jobs will be created. And 36 million more openings will result from retirements and others who drop out of the workforce.
Nearly all that job growth, incidentally, will come in the service sector. Manufacturing jobs will grow at only three-tenths of a percent annually. That's not because those jobs are going overseas, by the way. Blame the slow growth in manufacturing on the fast growth in manufacturing productivity.
The biggest growth in this decade - some 6.9 million new jobs - will come in professional speciality occupations. When you factor in retirements, we're going to need at least 12 million new professionals and more than 5 million managers.
Ed Potter, president of the Employment Policy Foundations in Washington, said the foundation's analysis of job growth and what's currently happening in education shows we could be as short as 3.5 million professionals at the end of this decade.
Despite the current recession and layoffs, a survey of employers by the National Association of Manufacturers found 80 percent of companies say a severe shortage of qualified job candidates already exists. And 60 percent of those companies said the lack of skilled workers is affecting their ability to produce goods and services they could sell.
More high-income positions
Even in the midst of a recession, high income jobs continue to grow. In October of this year, jobs paying $1,100 per week or more - the top 14 percent - had grown by 7.5 percent from the year before. Those high-paying jobs accounted for 60 percent of the 6.5 million net jobs created since 1996.
Who gets those jobs? People with post-secondary education. Sure, that means people with college degrees. But many of those jobs are also going to those completing vocational programs.
Job growth in the past decade came almost exclusively for those with some sort of post-high school education or training. During the past 13 months, the unemployment rate for persons with less than a high school diploma grew from 8.2 percent to 9.8 percent. For those with vocational training, unemployment is only 3.7 percent. For those with a college degree it's 2.1 percent.