Since When Do Education and Training Create Jobs?
This article was co-written by Brandon Roberts and David Altstadt on behalf of the Working Poor Families Project.
Stop the presses! College students, drop out now. Working adults --- don't even think about returning to the classroom.
Your aspirations for increasing your education and occupational skills are futile. You are doomed to graduate jobless and mired in debt, faced with no other choice but compete with the countless unemployed for entry-level, low-wage jobs at Wal-Mart.
At least that is what The New York Times seemingly wants you to believe in the July 18 piece, "After Training, Still Scrambling for Employment."
The NY Times supports its claims with a few anecdotes about newly trained and college-educated Americans who remain out of work, along with a smattering of damning statistics on the poor job placement rates of federally financed training programs. Interestingly, a previous NY Times article documenting the employment woes of recent college graduates did not blame the education institutions for their joblessness.
The chilling effect is palpable. Several readers commenting on the Times article appear ready to abandon their plans to enroll in college or job training.
Let's get a few things straight.
For starters, not all postsecondary education and job training programs are created equal. For every poor performing program identified, several others excel at preparing and placing participants in good-paying jobs. In an earlier post, we noted that some states have achieved better results than others in retraining and reemploying laid-off workers.
Second, education and job training do not create jobs. However, the U.S. economy will not rebound unless we invest in the education and skills of the workforce. Think of workforce development as a form of photosynthesis for the U.S. economy--the labor market cannot grow unless we feed it highly educated and skilled workers.
Consider research recently released by Georgetown University:
• The U.S. economy will create 46.8 million job openings by 2018, including 13.8 newly created jobs and 33 million "replacement" positions produced when workers retire.
• Nearly two-thirds of these jobs will demand postsecondary education and training.
In fact, the fastest growing occupations all require that workers have college-level education and training. These include (1) managerial and professional office, (2) education, (3) healthcare professional and technical, (4) scientific, technical, engineering, mathematic, and social sciences (STEM), and (5) community services and arts.
Given the current paucity of new jobs, what better time for students and working adults to enhance their education and skill levels? Surely there is no doubt that the future global competitiveness of the U.S. economy is tied to an educated and skilled workforce.
Even amid the current economic troubles, employers are having a hard time finding qualified workers. According to another recent NY Times article, skill shortages can be found even in declining industries, such as manufacturing.
Instead of dismissing the value of retraining laid-off workers, we should focus on how to make publicly financed education and training programs more adept at matching supply with demand. That is, training workers for the jobs and skills that employers need now and in the near future.
According to a recent evaluation of training programs, Public-Private Ventures has found that training providers that work with employers to determine skill requirements for available jobs are most successful at placing jobseekers in steadier, higher-paid positions. And, notably, through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the Obama Administration is targeting training resources to high-growth industry sectors such as healthcare.
Why turn our backs on a postsecondary education and training system that is clearly the ticket to good-paying middle class jobs and economic security, in addition to being the envy of much of the world? Instead, perhaps we should turn our attention to analyzing and writing about why private-sector employers are failing to create jobs in this country.
Brandon Roberts manages the Working Poor Families Project (WPFP), and David Altstadt conducts research on the education, skill development, and employment needs of low-skilled adults.
Whatever happened to the employers responsibility to teach the industry/company specific skills to that almost qualified candidtate?
When I went to tech school the computer science degrees where mainly offered in networking and "game design". While there is a definite need for game designers, I don't think everybody I went to school with is going to get the available jobs. Second, while the networking "degree" I was pursuing was definitely transferable the "school" took out very, very expensive loans that I am still trying to pay back. It wasn't a great school and was in many ways a rip-off school draining state and federal money. The teachers though were pretty good, and some excellent. It was probably easier for my networking teach to teach than scramble for jobs, and the math teacher I had from Pakistan was very good.
My point is that there has to be affordable education and also jobs that pay for the equation to work adequately. You have right now a glut of IT professionals, as in other fields. You need demand also.
Incidentally the school I went to had it's main focus in the Correctional and Homeland Security fields. The kids pursuing these degrees were obviously going to work in the growth industries of prison and border patrol. Basically these jobs rely on the government and won't be creating new businesses. I find this very, very sad.
fast forward to the outsourced and diminished manufacturing capacity world or today. Tech schools and community colleges are dropping or scaling back their industrial programs due to lack of demand.
This is a fallacy that a supply of educated workers somehow magically creates demand fo them. Without adequate demand, it simply drives down wages for educated workers and disaffects them. If you want to drive a supply of educated workers you need to have demand for them basic economics here folks
Also the myth of the skills shortage in mfg - peel back the onion a little on who is really saying this - it is usually those with outsourcing and or increased immigration agendas - not based on the reality of mfg where there are 100s of thousands of skilled, semi skilled and otherwise mfg workers un or underemployed. I personally know of degreed engineers fixing copiers and installing cable, driving trucks, selling insurance, because they can not find work in their fileds or have tired of the insecurity that manufacturing represents today. tyou want to keep talent in mfg - stop outsourcing the jobs
whoever heard of a skills shortage that did not put corresponding upward pressure on wages?
Even if the length and the quality of the postsecondary education varies a lot for different people - which it should - there is no doubt at all that it's always a valuable investment, even from the perspective of the individual. From the collective perspective, a decline in education is disaster plain and simple.
many of which which were designed in the 1990s against a backdrop of low unemployment and
"work first" philosophies. Those assumptions no longer apply. As the authors note, better
approaches would take a long-term view, balance the needs of firms and workers, and stress meaningful skills and knowledge development.
Relationship between states with high unemployment rate and low jobs and how much of the corporate America is doing business in those states?
Many speculate the private sector is not hiring because they're playing the waiting game, they do not like the health care reform and the possibility of losing the Bush tax cuts and that Republicans are trying to undermine Obama thru any means possible.
I wonder if there is a connection - or a pattern .
All this considered, graduates are going to have to compete harder for a smaller pool of jobs that have stagnant wages and shrinking benefits. They will be entering the job market with more debt than ever. If we are all going to be paid like peons, why go into significant debt while simultaneously lining the pockets of the elite for the right to be treated thusly?
So the conundrum presented by the Times article was hypothetical. However, the enablers of this conundrum think they we're living large on unemployment benefits and by extension feel that there's still something left that they can bleed from us. I'll say there is, it's called Social Security and they are itching to get their hands on that untapped pool of money so that they can use it to play the game we know as Monopoly.
ANd tight on about SS - look who is pushing for cutting SS - its all wall streeters licking their chops to get ahold of this money for their gambling addictions. Just like they did when they pushed for the shift away from the defined benefit retirement plan and into the 401k