The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that although nearly 12 million U.S. workers are unemployed, businesses report nearly four million open jobs—jobs that cannot be filled by previously displaced workers because of gaps in skills. There is clearly a mismatch between the education and skills that many Americans have and what employers need. At a time when American industry is struggling to fill these open positions, it is common to say that we have a skills gap. But in truth, it’s not just a skills gap–it’s a training gap.
If we want to fix this, we need to put the onus on those who train, rather than those who need to be trained. A recent OECD study that evaluated work-based skills taught in schools in 29 countries found that the U.S. ranks dead last. Wharton School professor Peter Cappelli found that in 1979, young U.S. workers received an average of 2.5 weeks of training per year. By 1995, studies found that the average company offered just under 11 hours per year. By 2011, Accenture found that only 21% of all U.S. employees had received any employer-provided training in the past five years. In other words, 80% of today’s workforce is working jobs with little to no instruction since before the iPhone was invented!
Chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor. Read the whole story at
via Don’t Blame Students for the Jobs-Skills Mismatch – Wall Street Journal – WSJ.com.
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