US Employers Struggle To Match Workers With Open Jobs (npr.org)

In the United States, there's a record number of jobs open: around 6 million. That's just about one job opening for every officially unemployed person in the country. From a report: Matching the unemployed with the right job is difficult, but there are some things employers could do to improve the odds. Andrew Chamberlain, chief economist for the job site Glassdoor, says U.S. employers often complain that workers don't have the skills needed for the jobs available. That is true for some upper-level health care and technology jobs. "But for the most part, it doesn't look to be like there is a skills gap," Chamberlain says. "That's not the main reason why there are many job openings." Chamberlain says that with unemployment so low and the U.S. labor force growing slowly, there's no doubt it is harder for companies to find workers. But he says if that were the main problem, you would see wages rising more rapidly in the economy -- and that's not the case in many industries. Part of the hiring problem, Chamberlain says, lies in company hiring policies.

Comments

Ironically, economy not that great

[HBI]

150-180k net jobs created per month is not good at all. 300k/month used to be the gold standard for robust growth. The anemic Obama economy got people used to this, but by pre-2008 standards, this is a mild recession right now.

If the business were out there to justify it, people would be willing to pay higher salaries to lure in workers. The fact they aren't tells you the truth about what I said above - the economy is not that great.

Re:Drugs

[Bozzio]

How is it a contradiction? I've been smoking "on and off." I've gone several consecutive *years* where I haven't smoked. I also never have any difficulty stopping (in fact, stopping is easier than starting as it's hard to find where I live).

None of that sounds like addiction to me. Maybe we have different definitions of addiction.

Re:On the Job Training

[peragrin]

It gets better outside of tech.

We want a bachelors degree with 5 or more years experience in unique field and the pay rate is $40,000 to $45,000.

Do they realize that a bachelors degree is 4 times that amount? Nope we set our wages in 1990 and haven't adjusted them since. This is the bigger issue companies want to pay 1990 wages in 2017. Changing that is the difficult part.