Despite some hopeful signs of recovery in late 2009, Americans welcomed a new decade with the realization that the highest unemployment rate in nearly 30 years is here to stay, at least for the foreseeable future. In December, jobless claims unexpectedly rose, keeping the national unemployment rate at 10 percent.
While high unemployment continues to be a hallmark of the so-called "Great Recession," an interesting dichotomy has arisen. According to a survey of recruiters released in October 2009 by the Human Capital Institute, a global professional association, more than half of the respondents said that their greatest challenges include "quality of candidates" or "availability of candidates" when it comes to filling their employment rolls. This is in line with what we have been hearing around the country from health care, energy and advanced manufacturing industry representatives that rely on skilled workers who have some level of post-secondary certification or degree.
In his November 30, 2009 piece on HuffPost titled, "Job Creation Agenda Must Include Low-Skilled Workers," Bob Giloth of the Annie E. Casey Foundation noted that 88 million adults do not have the basic skills necessary for 90 percent of the jobs in the fastest-growing industries. A recent study from the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce underscores this dilemma. It finds that the percentage of the workforce requiring some college or above is expected to increase from 59% in 2007 to 63% by 2018. The Center warns that "unless we increase output from postsecondary institutions, the demand for college talent will exceed its supply."
What's more, based on retirement, dropout, skill, and demographic figures, the U.S. Department of Labor is predicting a labor shortage of more than 35 million skilled and educated workers over the next 30 years. It also predicts that between 2010 and 2020, 70 million Americans will retire.
While it may only partially explain today's record high unemployment rate, I believe this "Skills Recession" poses a long-term workforce challenge for our country that should be addressed as part of our current job creation efforts.
What we need is to make our workforce development programs more demand-driven, and our education system more supportive of this effort. There is a need to focus on high-level skills training for career track jobs that exist now and in the foreseeable future.