As nearly 13 million Americans look for a job, federal funding to retrain American workers and prepare them for the jobs of the 21st century are drying up.
Funding for job-training programs across the country is down 18 percent from 2006 -- even though there are six million more unemployed Americans today. Funding for counseling for the unemployed -- like resume guidance and job interview coaching -- is down 13 percenet.
In fact, funding for job retraining for Americans is roughly half of what it used to be more than a decade ago.
So now -- even though the economy is slightly improving -- businesses are having difficulty finding Americans workers who are trained and qualified to handle the new job.
President Obama's budget proposal called for a massive increase in job retraining program: increasing funding to nearly $3 billion a year. Studies show this is a good economic investment, as every dollar spent on retraining unemployed Americans for new jobs yields as much as eight dollars for the local community.
However, multi-millionaire Congressman Paul Ryan's Republican trickle-down austerity budget once again slashes funding for federal job retraining programs.
Under their proposal, it's far more important to give $3-trillion in tax breaks to the super-rich than give working Americans new job skills.
This post was originally published on Thomhartmann.com.