Where the Skills Gap Really Resides: a huge mismatch at the middle-skill level

It is those people who have not earned the minimum of a two-year degree that Scaglione says constitute a large population of our country who are stuck in low-skilled jobs that do not require any higher education.  Low-skilled jobs that do not require a minimum of a two-year degree represent about 35 percent of all jobs. Middle-skilled jobs that do require a minimum of a two-year degree represent about 45 percent of all jobs. The remaining jobs are high-skilled jobs, requiring a minimum of a four-year degree.

The skills gap is definitely not at the high-skill level. “There are plenty of four-year degree people, and there are plenty of four-year degree jobs,” Scaglione says. “There are plenty of professional-level jobs to match the people coming out of college. In other words, for CPAs, engineers, medical professionals, etc., the demand for those levels of skills is pretty well matched with the supply chain.”

There is, however, “a huge mismatch at the middle-skill level,” Scaglione adds. “There is not enough talent coming through the system to meet the demand for jobs at the middle-skill level, and there is an overabundance of low-skilled workers.”  Therein sits the skills gap problem that screams to be fixed.

I won’t go into solutions for fixing this problem. There are many, and describing them would take a good number of additional blog posts and/or feature articles. There are also other elements that come into play here that I won’t delve deeply into at this time, including that many college graduates are being forced to take on middle-skill jobs, thus sending those who should be filling those jobs into the low-skill arena and further complicating the whole supply and demand of jobs…

via – The Skills Gap Revisited.

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