Why Companies Can't Find the Employees They Need - WSJ.com

Here is a major factor in the "unemployment" problem.
Companies are not feeling the same pain as the workforce. Companies are doing relatively well, but they aren't "trickling down" their profits to the workforce...

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"Try to become not a man of success, but try rather to become a man of value."
Albert Einstein

Antecdotal evidence forthcoming:

My company still puts employees thru aprentiships. We as management have come to the realization that todays youth do not want to do manual labor jobs.......until they hear what we make. Thus we take them as laborers and get the real OJT and pay for classroom training once a week. They are given raises for their progressions with a guaranteed raise to journeyman status upon completion of the 4 year program.

This can take your basic $10 an hour laborer, to a guy making $65K+ a year in 4-5 years. COLLEGE CANNOT guarantee this type of return on a $0 dollar investment by the student.

But, we will still have the same issues they speak of..............After I train them, they will still bolt for $1 and hour more.........

Blame it on the absurd notion of a mandated minimum wage. Or labor costs are thus distorted.

I never grow tired of the amusement I feel when I read about how companies are doing well and will continue to do well hen the consumers are broke.

People need only accept that their services are worth what the employer is willing to pay, not what a politician, job counselor or their mothers thinks they are worth.

Of course, they could also shut up and try to start a business of their own, but that would involve the inescapable intrusion of reality on their warped value system, no wouldn't it?

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“Quod scripsi, scripsi"

"Sometimes, the source of the beautiful dawning light that drives back the darkness, is your house burning"

The article contradicts itself...

FIRST, they say...

So the first complaint they show is that they want people with the skills to pay the bills...Prospective employees have a skills shortage...They can't find educated people...

But THEN they make a contradictory complaint...

So they say the problem is that companies want to hire people who know everything and there aren't any, and then they say can't hire people that know everything because their pay demands are too high...So they CAN find educated people, but don't like the requirements to hire...

So which is it?...It can't be both...

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"You get the respect that you give" - cnredd

They aren't talking about jobs you can just train people for in a couple of weeks.

They are talking about jobs where you need some sort of technical school training or the like,

We have all these college graduates with useless degrees and high student debt in Advanced CUbs 3rd base history while kids who actually got a useable skill are in high demand.

People with trade school degrees and useful skills might be "in high demand", but in my state- a non-union state- they still don't make much money. Barely enough to avoid living in poverty, especially if they have large families.
My state is more than half hispanic. Large families are a traditional part of the latino culture. Not all individuals of hispanic heritage today wish to have five or six children, but many still do. A welding degree and an air-conditioning license from the community college or one of the local trade schools will not permit them to support their families in anything but poverty and squalor, regardless of how many hours they put in.

How many times have you looked at a product or service but decided not to buy it because the price was too high? It is the same with businesses looking to hire.

Lots of younger workers having been raised in our entitlement culture demand big bucks to start and that the job conform to their interests. Employers with many options to chose from in the Obama economy are unwilling to take the risk and bear the expense of developing a technically skilled employee from a history major.

At the same time some businesses overlook high potential candidates by using HR to screen using checkboxes of binary requirements. When they receive hundreds of applications per job opening it is difficult to justify the lost productivity of having the hiring manager pick through them all.

When it comes to menial or semi-skilled work, workers don't get any brownie points (ie, raises and promotions) for being older, or for having been on the job for years.

For one thing, if they're older, the skills they learned in trade school thirty years ago are now obsolete, and a recent young trade school grad is actually better qualified.

For another, a twenty year old is typically physically stronger and healthier and able to work faster, harder, and longer than a fifty year old.
And when it comes to low-end labor, that's what employers want: brute physical strength and endurance. What else are they supposed to care about? Those are the qualifications for the job.

How many of those history majors I used as an example are looking for low end laborer work? Few if any. They prefer welfare from their families and government to the "indignity" of even semiskilled labor.

The assertion that workers stop learning once they leave trade school is insulting. Training and education is just the start of a productive employees learning. That is why employers value experience over a new graduate.

My ex-husband got a trade school degree in commercial art, back in the early 90s. he worked in his field (sort of- at a printing company) for awhile.
But shortly after he graduated, everything changed, and the field became very computer-oriented and technically advanced, in ways that he had not learned in trade school.
Today, he works in a factory. He won't work in his field again.

edit: I should add, though, that he is a foreman in the factory, and he's probably better off than he would've been with no degree at all.