A jobs crisis? No, it’s a skills crisis

New York Daily News ^ | 01/16/2013 | Stanley Litow

[SeekAndFind]

As each month’s unemployment figures show only modest declines, some may mistakenly believe that the United States has a “jobs crisis.” But a closer analysis of the data reveals that our fundamental challenge is a lack of skills, not jobs.

I made this observation at the recent STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) Summit convened by the Daily News. But don’t take my word for it. Look at the January 2013 New York City Real Time Jobs Report, which lists local employers that posted the most new ads in the past 90 days and the number of opportunities available.

The current edition of this report documents the existence of more than 300,000 unfilled jobs in the city. My company, IBM, ranked sixth on the list with nearly 1,000 unfilled jobs in New York City alone. JPMorgan Chase led the way with more than 2,000 unfilled positions, and AT&T and Citigroup together had more than 2,000 careers in search of qualified personnel.

A deeper look at the jobs report numbers indicates that 30% of the vacancies — the largest single category — were in the professional, scientific and technical services sector. This is conclusive proof that a focus on preparing our young people for careers in these fields is the crucial economic challenge of our time.

[kabar]

There are about 10 million Americans with STEM degrees (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) not working in those fields.

[dfwgator]

You mean a degree in African-American Lesbian Studies won’t get me a job?

[SeekAndFind]

So, why don’t some of them apply to the 30,000 or so vacancies in NY?

[SeekAndFind]

RE: You mean a degree in African-American Lesbian Studies won’t get me a job?

Starbucks has plenty of openings for Baristas.

[DManA]

Perfect response to this article.

Why oh why can’t we find PHD physicists to fill our $50,000 job.

[Cronos]

The thing that worries me is this -- the jobs are in science, engineering etc.

i'm a mechanical engineer, but moved to IT (more money!), but the number of engineers, doctors etc. are only 5% or less of the population

Many folks can't take the heavy duty maths involved or the enormous learning required to be a doctor -- and that doesn't make them dumb: my sis-in-law is a professor of Japanese language and culture (and firmly conservative), and brilliant at languages, but show her numbers and she is terrified, she can hardly understand them, no matter how hard she tries

And I have friends who are nowhere near smart enough to be in science or high finance or other fields or even in literature or language etc. or even in business

What's going to happen to these?

We may complain about outsourcing to China, but there is also the threat of robotisation -- a car factory that employed a thousand people can now run with just a few dozen skilled technicians.

I probably put lots of people out of a job with balance transfer and insurance online applications

What's going to happen to the middle 80% IQ people?

There are only so few skilled jobs like hairdressers, plumbers etc (and don't get me wrong, I have a lot of respect for a good plumber and if I was cutting hair, well, we'd look like we were in the 80s)

[Obadiah]

You see, in a Republican administration it's called a "jobs crisis". In a Democrat administration, it's a "skills crisis".

Therefore, in a Republican administration, it's the fault of the Republican. In a Democrat administration, it's YOUR fault!

[Cronos]

yet even those baristas will have to be reasonably skilled and know different types of coffees.

[17th Miss Regt]

This is conclusive proof that a focus on preparing our young people for careers in these fields is the crucial economic challenge of our time.

No. The crucial economic challenge of our time is getting young folks skilled in readin', writin', 'rithmetic, to learn the value of hard work and to plan for the future. That is more basic and has a better effect than continuing to teach them teach them lesbian literature themes and telling them, "Oh, you might want to take some hard sciences, too." The author was a high mucky muck in the New York city schools. If he retired from the school system instead of resigning in disgust, then he is probably part of the problem.

[Cronos]

There are a lot of skilled workers who have been lured out of the not-very-well-paid STEM occupations to work in high finance and elsewhere, and he suggests that an increase in wages would bring many back into STEM activities.2

Tell me about it -- but the money in STEM will never match high-finance and it was way out of level in the early 2000s when I joined the workforce

Guys I knew who did an MBA went into Goldman and were earning multiples of what I was earning in IT -- and I was earning much more than my classmates were earning in mech jobs.

[cuban leaf]

This rings true for me. My three 20 something daughters all live in Seattle. Their “stories” are as follows:

Daughter 1: no college but follows fathers footsteps (IT), eventually getting Business Analysis training and is now a well paid BA.
Daughter 2: Degree in Accounting and is now a well paid accountant.

Daughter 3: Civil engineering degree and is now a well paid engineer. The youngest is only 24, the oldest just turned 30.

I thought they were just “fortunate” but now that I think of it, their cousins that attained no skills - just worked the “retail counter” are really struggling.

[Olog-hai]

Not only the wealth, but the independence and security of a country, appear to be materially connected with the prosperity of manufactures. Every nation, with a view to those great objects, ought to endeavor to possess within itself all the essentials of national supply. These comprise the means of subsistence, habitation, clothing and defense.

— Alexander Hamilton

Definitely a dearth of jobs rather than skills.

[setha]

Only a shortage of US citizens that can satisfy impossible-to-fill-by-anyone requirements.

That aside, if companies find a shortage, they could always train the difference and encourage people to stay for longer terms.

[RadiationRomeo]

Here in Ohio they can’t fill the gas field jobs because no one can pass a drug test. But that’s a different problem.

[kabar]

Maybe the wages have been reduced to unattractive levels because we are bringing in immigrants to do those jobs at lower wages. In NYC you need a much higher level of wages to just be considered middle class. It has to do with the cost of living as well as the onerous taxes imposed by NYC as well as the state of NY.

• Each year, some 200,000 additional skilled foreign workers are admitted through a variety of existing visa programs.

• At least one million skilled nonimmigrant workers are in the United States at any one time.

There are numerous indications in the high-tech fields that there is a surplus of both domestic and potential foreign workers in the U.S. labor markets. If a firm is hiring at the bachelor’s level, the Bureau of Labor Statistics tells us that in June 2011 there were 2,118,000 unemployed residents of the United States with bachelor’s degrees or more. There are some duds in that group, undoubtedly, but a lot of skills as well.

Another way of looking at this situation is to examine what America’s colleges and universities are doing to produce graduates in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) fields and to compare that to the STEM workforce, as Hal Salzman, a professor of public policy at Rutgers has done.

Salzman puts the total STEM workforce at 4.8 million. That is roughly one-third of the 15.7 million workers who hold at least one science or engineering degree.

There are a lot of skilled workers who have been lured out of the not-very-well-paid STEM occupations to work in high finance and elsewhere, and he suggests that an increase in wages would bring many back into STEM activities.

Supposing the employer — and many of them operate this way — would prefer to ignore the two million-plus unemployed graduates in the country, and ignore the 10 million or so STEM-trained people employed outside STEM occupations, and wants to hire foreign workers. Well, there are plenty of opportunities to do that through, for instance, the numerically limited aspects of the H-1B program. Of the 85,000 numerically limited slots in that program for the coming fiscal year 57,900 of them remained open on June 17, 2011, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).

In addition there are numerically unlimited opportunities to hire skilled foreign labor in the L, J, O, and F-1 (with OPT) categories that are described below. In the last-named category the employer gets a bonus of as much as $10,000 for hiring a foreign graduate of an American university rather than a citizen or a green card graduate of the same university with the same skills. That may be hard to believe, but it is the case.

[cuban leaf]

When I was a computer programmer I ended up working with two guys at two separate contracts that were ex-chemists. I asked them why they went into programming and both said it was all about money and opportunity. Interestingly, one had worked in the petrolium industry.

There is another article I read that said the real problem is not that there are not enough people. Rather, there are not enough people that will work for what they are willing to pay. This analogy was used: These companies saying there is a shortage of skilled workers is like a car buyer saying there is a shortage of cars to buy that meet their needs. There isn’t. What they mean is there are no cars that meet their needs that are within their budget.

Cheapskates can never find what they are looking for.

[DManA]

Another factor, the really good workers aren’t content to put all that effort in for the benefit of others. They will start their own business the first chance they get.

So if you ask me big business sees definite advantages to government policies that act like a boot on the neck of small business.

[Vendome]

BS

It’s about uncertainty in the marketplace and what the gubmit demandsaand the confusion surrounding it.

Get out of the way and simplify life.

[DManA]

That’s a good point. There was a time that business took on some of the burden of training their work force. That was when an employee was considered a valuable asset.

Now they are commodities bought on the open market.