Robert J. Samuelson, Washington Post: Employers lack confidence, not skilled labor http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/employers-lack-confidence-not-skilled-labor/2013/05/05/757340c8-b411-11e2-9a98-4be1688d7d84_story.html?wpisrc=nl_opinions Excerpts: Are we missing a couple million jobs? These would be jobs that exist but lack workers to fill them. The notion that the recovery is being hobbled by too few skilled workers is seductive. It might explain today’s stubbornly high unemployment and why aggressive government policies to promote recovery have been so ineffective. Low interest rates and big budget deficits can’t cure bottlenecks in the job market. They can’t make construction workers into computer scientists. There’s only one problem with this story: It’s mostly fiction. The answer almost certainly involves employers, not workers. Businesses have become more risk-averse. They’re more reluctant to hire. They’ve raised standards. For many reasons, they’ve become more demanding and discriminating. These reasons could include (a) doubts about the recovery; (b) government policies raising labor costs (example: the Affordable Care Act’s insurance mandates); (c) unwillingness to pay for training; and (d) fear of squeezed profits. In practice, motives mix. The chief victims of this shift in business behavior seem to be the long-term unemployed (more than six months), as some fascinating research by economists William Dickens and Rand Ghayad of Northeastern University suggests. By their estimates, virtually all the reduction in hiring falls on this group, regardless of their other characteristics (age, education, industry experience). Many firms seem to have concluded that the long-term jobless are damaged goods. Ed
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