How To Solve The Skills Gap In United States

Skills Gap Trainer Podcast

1. INTRODUCTION

A skills gap in United States? Government officials, economists, employment specialists, companies and workers are all concerned with whether or not the workers will be able to fill the millions of advertised jobs in the US. Throughout the country, a skills gap exists between the abilities of the workers and the requirements of employers. This skills gap is present in the different sectors of the economy. It is present in everything from construction, manufacturing, mechanical, health care, food production, engineering, information technology and even retail. The popular idea is that there simply aren’t enough workers with the right set of skills. But this idea is simplistic as it focuses on the weaknesses of the worker while ignoring the environment within which the worker operates.

Every month, there are about 5 to 7 million unfilled job openings in the US.

This is a figure which persists, and shows no sign of a decline. When discussing the matter with companies, they often cite the difficulty which they have in finding and retaining skilled employees. As for the workers, they often cite skills mismatch issues. Often workers feel either too over-qualified or too under-qualified for any job role they are at. A report from the National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB) verified these findings. The report claimed that “45% of small businesses could not find skilled applicants to fill job vacancies at the beginning of 2017”. In another report by Manpower Group (2018), 45% of the 39 000+ companies which were surveyed had a tough time filling the roles which they needed due to skills issues. Skills gaps and skills mismatches can lead to lost productivity for companies, and have a detrimental effect on the growth of worker careers and the economy.

Workers, economists and employers have offered vastly different explanations for the skills gap. First, workers tend to view the skills gap as created by the very difficult employment screening practices, low wages, and the lack of training plan to keep workers up to date with changing technology. Second, the economists tend to view the skills gap as created by several factors such as; the high level of automate-ability of many new jobs, and the high degree of specialization which new tech intensive jobs require. Third, employers tend to view the skills gap as caused by a limitation in the number of employees which are available. They argue, that if one were to increase the supply of labour through immigration and foreign work permits, the gap could be addressed. Regardless of who has presented the right solution, one thing is clear, the nation will continually need to solve for the skills gap as the workers will be continually challenged to keep up with new technologies as they are adapted and deployed within the work environment.

Whether or not the employer perspective of increasing the supply of labour would work, one has to approach this solution with a bit of skepticism and as a few questions. Would an increased supply of labour lower or increase wages? Further, would society benefit? Are businesses lobbying hard to fix the skills gap or simply to lower wages and have access to foreign workers? Employers usually argue for more supply, which is an argument for lower wages and greater management influence and control. On the other side of the argument, are usually workers who tend to argue the opposite view. The solutions that should be taken to address the skills gap, would hopefully be solutions which would protect decent wages while helping workers to enter and stay in the middle class.

Though no one entity (employer, economist, worker) seems to present the full picture, in this article, we have compiled a lengthy and comprehensive list of all of the problems and potential solutions to the skills gap challenge facing the US. ...

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