Free Republic

Complaints about a “skills gap” that make it difficult for employers to fill open positions have become commonplace in discussions about the economy and unemployment levels. Workers, the story goes, simply don’t have the educational background or professional training for the kinds of jobs that exist in today’s knowledge economy. The argument certainly feels like it makes sense – things have changed an awful lot in the past decade, and it could be that older workers simply don’t have the necessary skills for employment today. The trouble is that economists have become increasingly skeptical about the skills gap narrative, not...

One of the great memes out there in trying to diagnose persistently high unemployment and anemic job growth during what is still, I argue, the Great Recession is the so-called “skills gap”. The idea here is that the fact that there are millions of unfilled job openings at the same time millions of people can’t find work can be chalked up to a lack of a skills match between unemployed workers an open positions. To pick one random example out of many, here’s the way US News and World Report put it last year: Some 82 percent of manufacturers say...

Last week’s disappointing unemployment report has refocused attention on the question of why, despite modest signs of economic recovery in recent months, American companies aren’t hiring. Indeed, some of the most puzzling stories to come out of the Great Recession are the many claims by employers that they cannot find qualified applicants to fill their jobs, despite the millions of unemployed who are seeking work. Beyond the anecdotes themselves is survey evidence, most recently from Manpower, which finds roughly half of employers reporting trouble filling their vacancies. The first thing that makes me wonder about the supposed “skill gap” is...

You can't solve a problem no one will talk about. A RECENT PSEUDO-SCANDAL at the Justice Department is yet another depressing reminder of intractable racial taboos--although not the kind we usually hear about from hand-wringing pundits and civil-rights scolds. At the end of October, the New York Times accused the Justice Department of covering up a study critical of its "diversity" hiring and management. The department had posted the study--a $360,000 piece of boilerplate from the diversity-consulting industry--on its website. About half the text had been very visibly blacked out. Among the redacted portions, gleefully reported on the Times's front...