Thursday, May 24, 2012

Structural unemployment in Iowa


The Cedar Rapids Gazette had a front page article today on Iowa's need for middle-skilled workers, defined as post high school education less than a bachelor's degree, i.e., an associate degree, technical certification, apprenticeship, or previous employer-provided training.

32% of jobs are high-skilled for which there are 29% qualified. 50% require middle skilled workers while the number of such workers is only 33%, and 18% of the jobs are low-skilled with 38% low-skilled workers. So there is a need to convert 17% of the low-skilled workers to mid-skilled, or else import workers from out of state.

Read it at The Gazette | Business 380
Iowa targeting ‘middle skills’ work force weakness in new report
by Dave DeWitte

8 comments:

Matt Franko said...

Are things falling apart out there Tom as apparently there are all of these critical job positions that continue to go unfilled????

Are many things shut down because they cant get things serviced? Broken down stuff because they cant get a repairman?

My BS detector is going off....

Resp,

Dan Lynch said...

Every employer I have worked for complained about not being able to find good employees.

Yet they would receive a stack of applications for every job opening. It's just that no one was good enough to please them.

And if you got hired, you still weren't good enough to please them.

Leverage said...

I keep hearing about this 'under-skilled labour force problem' all over developed nations.

I'm calling this one bullshit. Looks like an excuse from the 'job creators' failing to do their job (or maybe too much money hoarding eh? you guys, the job creators, are impossible to please as far as desire to save comes, something irrational going on here).

Now I can see a problem, if there was enough 'bid' for labour overall, these highly skilled impossible jobs would get more expensive. That has to be bad for the money hoarders, less money to hoard!

Tom Hickey said...

Matt, I have to say, I am somewhat mystified by this, too. 50% of jobs are mid-skill level? Never would have guessed that. But I know very little about the details of the employment data in either Iowa or the US.

DanF said...

Basically my interpretation is that they want to pay minimum wage but don't like what they attract when they only pay minimum wage.

Ryan Harris said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Michael Boudreau said...

It probably hasn't hit the international presses yet, but Canada is about to change rules for eligibility to unemployment Insurance to help encourage workers to take all those jobs that can't be filled. Interesting rebuttal from the PEF:

http://www.progressive-economics.ca/2012/05/18/more-on-labour-shortages/

At last measure Canada has 6 unemployed for every job and less than half of unemployed even eligible for benefits. Something like 1/3 of new jobs in the last 3 years were filled by TFW's (temporary foreign workers). This while true unemployment is over 10%.

This is what I don't get. I thought the 'free market' was about a buyer, a seller and a market price. If you can't find an employee, I'd suggest you're not offering the right price. Which, BTW, might include some training. Since when is all the training on the public purse so that more profit can be made.

We are truly mixed up. IMHO of course.

Matt Franko said...

This is all propaganda to bring in Asians who work for less.

If you have a critical position vacant that is causing you to lose sales to your competitors, YOU FILL IT AND TRAIN.

I was at Busch Gardens Williamsburg a while back and it was now largely staffed by Asians who could not even speak English under the new ownership by Blackstone Group (Peterson).

How is that for a "critical skill" that is required? ie Being able to speak????? They cant even speak yet somehow they possess "critical skills"? Whaaaaaaaaat?

Black youth unemployment in the Hampton-Roads area is probably 40%, but the Peterson people think its a better idea to go 12,500 miles to get Chinese to run the carnival games and do maintenance tasks because they possess "critical skills" among which is NOT the ability to speak ...

Dont buy it...

Resp,