Available Jobs, Not Enough Skilled Workers
Published: 6/1/10, 9:28 AM EDT
Available Jobs, Not Enough Skilled Workers
Two years after the start of the recession, the unemployment rate is still near double digits, which translates to millions of Americans looking for work. For every open job, employers have dozens or even hundreds of applicants eager to get hired. Yet many employers insist that finding qualified candidates is difficult, even in this economy. How can that be?
These employers don’t have a shortage of applicants — they have a shortage of qualified applicants. For most positions, the necessary skills, experience and education requirements are firm and can’t be loosened because of a lack of suitable candidates. Bad economy or not, employers need to know their workers are the best possible people for the job.
People who can’t find work should not be punished. And they haven’t been. The state unemployment system helps job seekers for half a year. The federal benefits kick in at that point.
Even in this economic storm, that should provide relief. It also, perversely, has encouraged some people not to look for work as hard as they should.
Many of us know someone who has come to depend on long-term unemployment benefits, and perhaps to believe they will never run out. Employers see it, too, in their struggles to fill job openings; some job applicants would rather collect unemployment pay.
Jobless benefits were not intended to be part of people’s household budgets forever. They are supposed to be temporary, a safety net. As painful as it will be for some, we have reached the limit on this generous benefit.
http://www.mlive.com/opinion/jackson/index.ssf/2010/07/editorial_enough_is_enough_whe.html
Not necessarily my opinion. I’m just posting.
I would love to see just what the job is, see how they determined the job requirements, and see who they passed over for the job, too
Whatever happened to training people to do the work??
How did the FIRST person who did the job learn to do it??