Why Is It So Hard for Employers to Fill These Jobs?

The Daily Signal ^ | August 23, 2014 | Stephen Moore

[2ndDivisionVet]

America has a deficit of workers. Willing workers. Capable workers. Skilled, or at least semi-skilled workers, who can do a job and do it well. There are at least one million jobs that go begging day after day if only employers could find workers to fill them.

This probably seems hard-to-believe. After all, how can America have a worker shortage when we have about 18 million Americans who are unemployed or underemployed? When the real unemployment rate is 12 percent?

Well certainly the economy isn’t creating nearly as many jobs as it should – in large part because of regulatory and tax restraints on hiring workers. Obamacare’s anti-employment impact, including the rule that caps employment at 50 workers or less at many firms to avoid the law’s higher costs, is just one example of a law that adds to unemployment lines.

But there are also millions of unemployed Americans who don’t have the skill sets to match what employers are in need of. To make matters worse, a lot of these frustrated job searchers have college degrees that are about as marketable as the paper diploma they are written on.

So what kind of jobs are going unfilled?

* Manufacturing – We always hear we are losing good manufacturing jobs in America and those bedrock middle class jobs aren’t coming back. Gregory Baise, the president of the Illinois Manufacturing Association, tells me that there are “some 500,000 jobs we can’t fill. It’s the biggest problem our industry faces.”. The industry needs welders, pipefitters, electricians, engineers. It needs people skilled in robotics and basic engineering.

* Trucking – At any time over the last several years there have been about 30,000 too few truckers to run long haul routes. The American Trucking Association tells me the number could be closer to 50,000. This is admittedly a tough and high-stress job with lots of time away from friends and family. But they are jobs that pay $50,000 and up, and a lot more than that with overtime.

* Energy – Bloomberg reports that “Gulf Coast oil, gas and chemical companies will have to find 36,000 new qualified workers” by 2016. Many energy towns have unemployment rates of less than 3 percent – in other words, there’s a worker shortage.

These aren’t menial or “dead end” jobs. They typically pay between $50,000 and $90,000 a year and with benefits the compensation can climb to $100,000. That’s rich in most nations.

Bob Funk, CEO of Express Employment Professionals, one of the nation’s largest temporary employment agencies located in Oklahoma City, places more Americans into jobs than just about anyone. With nearly half-a million hires a year he tells me, he can find a job for “any American with a strong work ethic and can pass a drug test.” He also estimates that the worker shortage – those with skills to fill available jobs – “is at least one million and probably higher than that.”

Why is it so hard to fill these jobs?

One reason is the curse of the so-called “skills mismatch.” American workers with high school or even college degrees just aren’t technically qualified to do the jobs that are open. This is a stunning indictment of our school system at all levels considering that all in parents and taxpayers often invest as much as $200,000 or more in a child’s education. We’re not turning our kids into competent workers.

Some governors like Mike Pence of Indiana have moved to make vocational education more standard in the Hoosier State. It’s a great idea and it’s a start.

But this won’t solve the whole problem because many companies are already willing to offer 3 to 6 months on the job training for trucking and manufacturing jobs. They will teach them men and women how to operate the machinery, the computers, and the scientific equipment. These aren’t sweatshop jobs.

Mr. Funk cites figures that more than half of the applicants for these kinds of jobs in the temporary job market can’t pass a drug test. “They are unemployable in that case,” he says regretfully.

Then there is the issue that these jobs don’t get filled because the work lacks glitz and glamour.

Too many Americans have come to view blue collar jobs or skilled artisan jobs as beneath them.

Contributing to this attitude is the wide availability of unemployment insurance, food stamps, mortgage bailout funds and other welfare. Taking these taxpayer handouts is somehow seen as normal and a first, not a last resort. One owner of a major trucking company told me last year, “drivers who get laid off don’t come back until their unemployment benefits run out.” This is documented by research from my colleagues at the Heritage Foundation who have found that “4 million Americans laid off in the recession faced effective marginal tax rates near or above 100 percent [because of welfare benefits], significantly reducing their attachment to the labor market.”

There’s no doubt America needs millions of more jobs. But we could put one million more people in jobs tomorrow if we get schools to train our kids with core competencies and if we could instill in Americans an old-fashioned work ethic. The only dead-end job is no job at all.

[American in Israel]

It’s less in issue of skills, and more an issue of work ethic and mandatory drug testing. Also, due to the depression and government non stop money printing wages are down. When welfare goes up and wages go down, only the moral in an immoral society work.

[2ndDivisionVet]

That $200,000 mostly went to teachers (who are barely educated in many cases), administrators, lackeys and union officials.

[rabidralph]

No work ethic. Same thing, I suppose.

[ClearCase_guy]

Part of the solution there is to end government charity. You either have a job or you starve in an alley. This would cut down on the number of people smoking joints and drinking malt liquor while "working". As it is, we have such safety nets that a lot of people don't work when they work. They hang out. The jobs come, the jobs go. Government checks arrive. It's all good. Who really cares about anything??

If there were no support systems outside of churches, people would behave differently.

[rabidralph]

Here's the problem.

[Alberta's Child]

But I think the point is that politicians ought to at least try to formulate a national policy of developing competent adults in this country.

You just hit on the problem right there. And I find it disturbing to read something like this on a website like FreeRepublic.

The last thing this country needs is another "national policy" of any kind. It's not the job of the government (i.e., the TAXPAYERS) to develop competent adults. If people and families can't do this themselves, then they should be sterilized or sent to live in a penal colony.

The only national policy we need is one that rewards success and punishes failure. Anything else is just bureaucratic bullsh!t and isn't going to accomplish anything.

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

There are several variables not usually considered.

I was once told by a US Army private that with his officers and NCOs working really hard to fill every minute of his day with productive work, practice, training and learning, he knew that he would still have at least an hour or two of slack time, not including lunch and coffee breaks, during the duty day. Usually more.

This lead to the discovery that the US Army itself has the ideal goal of getting just one hour a day of work out of each and every soldier and officer on average. And they almost never get it.

Pondering this leads to some very interesting conclusions about labor.

“Productivity” is the golden calf of economists, yet it is one of the most meaningless of terms. A rule of thumb is that, the harder one works, they less they are paid for their work.

Though it is not done, a corporation can be evaluated by at what level in their organizational pyramid useful work almost ceases to be. That is, somewhere in middle management, work is devolved to memo pushing, meeting attending, and coffee drinking, with just a few individuals spending perhaps an hour a week doing something useful.

The next obstacle to hiring are the people who are doing the hiring. Their objective is to get the hardest working, lowest paying, most experienced and youngest person for a given job. “We want recent college graduates with four years of experience, willing to work at half pay for a six month probationary period”, is a contradiction in terms.

They often must reeducate college graduates in basic literacy and math skills, in effect paying them to not work while being taught what they should have learned in school.

Add to this “personal problems” like the unwillingness to show up to work on time on a regular basis, drug, alcohol and tobacco use, medical conditions, previous criminal convictions, below average mental health, years of ‘empty resume’ unemployment, and general dishonesty.

http://i.imgur.com/9UhoHR0.jpg

[onona]

It’s less in issue of skills, and more an issue of work ethic and mandatory drug testing. Also, due to the depression and government non stop money printing wages are down. When welfare goes up and wages go down, only the moral in an immoral society work.

Very true. When you give free money, why should people work. And they come right out and tell you that too !

[wetgundog]

four words: Can’t pass drug test

[Shady]

Today the Bakeries are almost totally mechanized and the workers are being laid off by Bimbo is droves...

[ROCKLOBSTER]

The Remedy?

End all federal welfare, turn it back to the cities who would have to include it in their budget.

Raise the threshold for benefits very high, including work requirements and drug testing.

Penalize single parent gimme-girls, require them to attend “morality training”

[ClearCase_guy]

Perhaps I should have chosen my words more carefully. Or perhaps you are a little twitchy about terms.

I think government actively hurts our society. Pretty much everything the government does these days hurts families, communities and businesses.

What I want politicians to do is to do less of all of that. Their laws and regulations and social engineering mess everything up.

A return to limited government seems to me to be a decent national policy, but I guess that's a loaded term.

[Engedi]

They now how to join protest marches!

[Gen.Blather]

“Part of the solution there is to end government charity.”

Bingo! We have a winner.

[flamberge]

Corporate executives do not want to pay free market wages for workers. They prefer a system that will supply indentured servants with no recourse in the political or economic arenas. They don’t want to pay for training workers either.

That is the reality behind the so-called “skills gap”.

[COBOL2Java]

They now how to join protest marches!

Oh, right! Forgot about that! And they also know how to complete a DemocRAT voter registration form.

[mad_as_he$$]

Here is a short summary of my experience(s):
80% do not really want to work at manual labor or factory work. They think it is beneath them.
80% cannot pass a drug test.
80% cannot prove they have a high school diploma.
80% think they are overqualified for any job but CEO of Apple.

[Alberta's Child]

Maybe I do read things too literally. LOL.

You're absolutely right -- and thanks for the clarification.

I've long said that even most professional jobs these days could be done by someone with a high school education -- at least at the entry level. I work in engineering, and I know I probably could have done my first engineering job pretty well right out of high school.

[kabar]

Is There a STEM Worker Shortage? A look at employment and wages in science, technology, engineering, and math

Using the most common definition of STEM jobs, total STEM employment in 2012 was 5.3 million workers (immigrant and native), but there are 12.1 million STEM degree holders (immigrant and native).

Only one-third of native-born Americans with an undergraduate STEM degree holding a job actually work in a STEM occupation.

There are more than five million native-born Americans with STEM undergraduate degrees working in non-STEM occupations: 1.5 million with engineering degrees, half a million with technology degrees, 400,000 with math degrees, and 2.6 million with science degrees.

An additional 1.2 million natives with STEM degrees are not working — unemployed or out of the labor force in 2012. Despite the economic downturn, Census Bureau data show that, between 2007 and 2012, about 700,000 new immigrants who have STEM degrees were allowed to settle in the country, yet at the same time, total STEM employment grew by only about 500,000.

Of these new immigrants with STEM degrees, only a little more than a third took a STEM job and about the same share took a non-STEM job. The rest were not working in 2012.

Overall, less than half of immigrants with STEM degrees work in STEM jobs. In particular, just 23 percent of all immigrants with engineering degrees work as engineers.

In total, 1.6 million immigrants with STEM degrees worked outside of a STEM field and 563,000 were not working.

The supply of STEM workers is not just limited to those with STEM degrees. Nearly one-third of the nation's STEM workers do not have an undergraduate STEM degree.

Wage trends are one of the best measures of labor demand. If STEM workers are in short supply, wages should be increasing rapidly. But wage data from multiple sources show little growth over the last 12 years.

Real hourly wages (adjusted for inflation) grew on average just 0.7 percent a year from 2000 to 2012 for STEM workers, and annual wages grew even less — 0.4 percent a year. Wage growth is very modest for most subcategories of engineers and technology workers.

Are There Really Jobs Americans Won’t Do? A detailed look at immigrant and native employment across occupations

Of the 472 civilian occupations, only six are majority immigrant (legal and illegal). These six occupations account for 1 percent of the total U.S. workforce. Moreover, native-born Americans still comprise 46 percent of workers even in these occupations.

[John S Mosby]

Yes, the idea that we 1.) cannot reset the tax rate or the amount of welfare put out by us and 2.)new immigrants won’t know any better-— except that they DO, and once they get here they don’t work but go on welfare and/or work the system to death.