The truth came out in the Wall Street Journal (of all places) today:
Some of the complaints about skill shortages boil down to the fact that employers can't get candidates to accept jobs at the wages offered. That's an affordability problem, not a skill shortage. A real shortage means not being able to find appropriate candidates at market-clearing wages. We wouldn't say there is a shortage of diamonds when they are incredibly expensive; we can buy all we want at the prevailing prices.Robert Oak over at the Economic Populist points to the real problem with the skills of American workers: U.S. corporations won't train their employees any more. Apprenticeship programs disappeared. So did management training programs. Private investment in training is down. And today 44 percent of corporations don't offer any kind of tuition reimbursement, up from 35 percent in 2007.
Concludes Oak,
Once again we see pretty much a complete disregard for the U.S. citizen worker, student and U.S. middle class. No jobs, no training, no investment in America and especially Americans. Opportunity denied at every turn to the point the U.S. has a gini coefficient above the entire industrialized world and third world social mobility. Maybe we should change the nation's title, United States of America, to Disposable American Land instead.
