Wednesday, August 1, 2018

Closing the Skills Gap

According to the Department of Labor, more than 6.5 million jobs remain unfilled because employers can't find workers with the necessary skills.

The problem shows up clearly in the widening wage gap for skilled work, which extends beyond the well-documented distinction between the earnings of the college-educated and those with only a high school diploma or less.

American workers will need to upgrade their skills continuously to stay ahead of these economic pressures.

Executive orders aim to expand training, which the White House refers to as "Workforce development." Adding to such ad hoc efforts, the administration has promised to develop a concerted strategy for "Training and retraining" workers for "High-demand industries."

Employers are rightly concerned that their newly minted apprentices may take their skills elsewhere; some have proposed mandating that workers stay with a firm for a certain number of years, or that firms receive compensation if a worker leaves early, but such arrangements are hard to enforce and even harder to implement.

Even in Germany, which has enjoyed great success with its apprentice programs for the young, older workers seeking to retool their skills have fared less well.

The pace of technological development will increasingly require workers to retool their skills multiple times during their careers.

https://www.city-journal.org/html/closing-skills-gap-16083.html 

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