There is a durable belief that much of today’s unemployment is rooted in a skills gap, in which good jobs go unfilled for lack of qualified applicants. This is mostly a corporate fiction, based in part on self-interest and a misreading of government data.We’ve looked at the skills gap myth here before. I was wary right from the start, because the skills gap story is extremely beneficial to employers, at the expense of employees and the public. Too, the skills gap story has been used to justify everything from privatizing public schools to union-busting to unpaid internships to employers just blatantly shoving the cost of training their employees off on the public. No one ever says “there’s a skills gap! let’s extend unemployment benefits!” No, it’s all privatizing and union-busting and public subsidies to private employers.
A Labor Department report last week showed 3.8 million job openings in the United States in April — proof, to some, that there would be fewer unemployed if more people had a better education and better skills. But both academic research and a closer look at the numbers in the department’s Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey show that unemployment has little to do with the quality of the applicant pool.
Sit in at any economic development conference in Wisconsin these days and you’re bound to hear talk about the “skills gap.”The New York Times helped spread the “durable belief” they’re so upset about, actually. The completely clueless Tom Friedman was one of the main salespeople. But why didn’t statements like this from the skills gap myth sales force cause people to question this story?
The term is popular with employers who complain they can’t find enough qualified workers to fill open positions — despite a stubbornly high unemployment rate.
Earlier this month, a top executive with Marinette Marine Corp. warned that “manufacturing would cease to exist” in the state unless Wisconsin addressed its skilled worker shortage.
State officials — including Gov. Scott Walker — have jumped on the issue too, saying there are loads of great jobs out there if workers could improve their skills. The Legislature with near bipartisan support recently approved $15 million in grants to private-sector companies to train new workers and Walker wants to target some higher education funding to schools that will focus on teaching needed skills.
The blame-the-worker mentality lurking behind the “ skills gap” thesis was more explicitly laid out by PIMCO hedge fund owner Bill Gross, who declared, “Our labor force is too expensive and poorly educated for today’s marketplace.”This is from an interview with one of the skills gap debunkers:
Peter Cappelli (PC): These stories have been kicking around for a long time – about problems associated with the labor force that are causing employers headaches … they have all been wrong frankly, so far. But, there are a lot of them. So at some point, people keep hearing all these stories and they start to think that there must be something to them. So I think where it started this time was of course during the Great Recession, and people started hearing these stories, and wondering what’s going on.Why do we have to go through this over and over? Wouldn’t it be easier to look at these claims critically right from the start before just blindly repeating them over and over until they become “durable beliefs”?
The mainstream view is the intersection of a couple of different arguments. One argument is that employers can’t find what they want and the other argument is that schools are failing – and the conclusion from those two arguments is that employers can’t find what they want because students don’t have adequate skills when they graduate because the schools are doing such a lousy job. So that’s the dominant view.
We know that’s not true – first, schools are not getting worse. In fact, student performance is going up and it’s been true for quite a while that the average American is more educated than the job they’re doing requires. There’s actually a whole line of research about the excess supply of people being over qualified, so I knew that part of the story wasn’t true. So you start asking yourself about the other parts. Like if you really have a shortage of some kind, you’d expect labor markets to get tight and you would expect wages to go up. But, that hasn’t been happening. So that suggests that something is wrong, because if wages are not going up, how can you have a tight labor market?
And then we know that employers are basically not paying very much, so if you are the least bit economically oriented, then you say ‘ok, they can’t find what they want, but they’re not willing to raise their prices (wages in this case) so gee, that’s not a surprise.’ The point is there is not a single part of that conventional wisdom is true. And it’s amazing how popular it is. But, it’s popular because first, the employer is off the hook.
Protests against bus and underground fare rises in the Brazilian city of Sao Paulo have turned violent. Police fired rubber-coated bullets and tear gas, and detained more than 200 people. Police say they seized petrol bombs, knives and drugs. Violence has also been reported at protests in Rio de Janeiro. An estimated 5,000 protesters converged on the streets of Sao Paulo’s central area on Thursday – the fourth day of the protests.Reuters
Thousands of Brazilians have protested in several cities over the past ten days, and organizers are planning for another march in Sao Paulo on Monday night. Rising prices for public transportation was the original cause of the the protests, organized by Movimento Passe Livre. Since then, Brazilians have joined protests for various other reasons, including rising crime, income inequality, and corruption. The protests are quickly becoming a sign of a weakening public confidence for Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff ahead of the 2014 FIFA World Cup.More reporting from Vice; images from PolicyMic; a Tumblr for the movement.
Police said on Sunday that about 15,000 people took part in a rally outside the government building in the capital Sofia to demand a new election. Protesters also gathered outside parliament and in other Bulgarian cities. Prime Minister Plamen Oresharski’s decision to appoint 32-year-old media mogul Delyan Peevski as chief of the powerful national security agency DANS [!!] and parliament’s rapidity in rubber stamping the nomination angered many people.Canada, Montreal
Thousands of Montrealers snaked through the city’s downtown core on Saturday afternoon to protest against the Conservative government’s changes to employment insurance. The changes to EI, which came into effect in January, have spurred several protests this year across Eastern Canada — home to many seasonal workers affected by the new rules.China
More than 3,000 villagers from Henan’s Xuchang county have maintained a 24-hour silent vigil for the past 12 days over the Quandian coal mine run by the Henan Shenhuo Group, which they say has devastated the ground near their homes, swallowed up a road, and left cracks in their houses.China (Hong Kong)
In a show of protest against U.S. surveillance programs and in support of whistle-blower Edward Snowden, several hundred people marched Saturday to the U.S. Consulate General and the offices of the Hong Kong government despite drizzly weather. “Shame on NSA! Defend freedom of speech!” chanted marchers, who carried signs written in Chinese and English and wrapped in plastic to keep out the rain. “Protect Snowden!”Egypt, Cairo
Has Cairo become the world’s protest capital? It would not have been tolerated before the revolution, but now numerous demonstrations are held in Cairo each week. Some estimates suggest that over 5,000 public protests were held across Egypt in the first five months of this year alone.Greece
Greece was back in protest mode after Antonis Samaras, the centre-right prime minister, broke ranks with his coalition partners and high-handedly closed the state broadcaster on June 11th without first securing their agreement. As sacked employees of ERT (Hellenic Radio and Television) continued to occupy the Greek state broadcaster’s headquarters, streaming live coverage of their plight over the internet, scores of former colleagues peacefully set up camp in a park outside the ERT building in Agia Paraskevi, a suburb of Athens.Hurriyet Daily News:
Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras moved to defuse a political crisis over the government’s abrupt closure of state broadcaster ERT that prompted a nationwide strike on June 13 and brought thousands into the streets in protest.India
Leaders across the political parties joined hands during a human chain on Sunday in Pune to protest against the revised development plan for the city. All the leaders and representatives of NGO’s have demanded scrapping of the DP. Pune Bachav Kruti Samiti had organised the human chain for an hour between 9 and 10 am at Lokmanya Tilak Chowk near Alka Talkies.Indonesia, Jakarta
The Jakarta Police said at least 4,000 people would take to the streets on Monday to protest the government’s plan to raise the subsidized fuel price.Japan, Tokyo
Around 7,500 people participated in the anti-nuclear protests in the Japanese capital, according to organizers cited by AFP. The demonstrators gathered in a park in central Tokyo, marched through the city and rallied outside the offices of Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO), operator of the Fukushima nuclear power plant which suffered meltdowns of three reactor cores following an earthquake and tsunami two years ago.Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur
Tens of thousands of people held a rally near Malaysia’s capital against alleged electoral fraud, further raising the political temperature after divisive recent polls. The latest in a series of protest rallies over the May 5 elections – which the opposition says were won fraudulently by the 56-year-old ruling coalition – saw a large crowd gather in an open field outside Kuala Lumpur Saturday night.Channel News Asia:
Malaysian police on Saturday arrested 15 people over a flash-mob protest held ahead of a planned June 22 opposition rally against alleged fraud in elections last month, but they were later freed. Those detained, who included opposition-aligned activists but also a 10-year-old boy, were held for disrupting public order in a busy shopping area of the capital Kuala Lumpur.Nepal
A strike called by 33 parties in Nepal to protest an election called for November shut down transport, schools and markets yesterday, the parties said in a statement.Peru
Stones rain down on Peruvian riot police as they try to calm protests by angry university students. The city of Cusco, better known as the capital of the Inca empire, has seen several days of demonstrations against a proposed education law. Students say it could privatise universities.Thailand
Anti-government white-mask protesters gathered in many provinces yesterday despite opposition from red-shirt supporters of the government. In Bangkok, about 1,000 people – many wearing white Guy Fawkes masks – gathered at the CentralWorld shopping complex yesterday afternoon.Yemen
Yemeni security officials say thousands have protested in the capital against “excesses” by security forces, calling for the overthrow of the president and national security apparatus.So, what can we conclude from this random collection of incidents? First, there’s a lot of protest out there. It’s occurred to me that one reason our global ruling elites — besides living in a “morally pathological” environment — are so paranoid is that they have real enemies; hence the global militarization of police forces, and global surveillance as well. Second, currently, although a lot of expertise in mobilization is clearly being developed, the “causes” are diverse. However, in a crisis, things correlate; it would be interesting to see if and how the local blobs of mercury come together globularly over issues like food, or water, or fuel (stuff at the bottom of Maslow’s hierarchy). No doubt climate change will accelerate such correlations. Third, there are some protests on this list that I probably wouldn’t support. What is interesting to me is the global scale and intensity. Finally, yes, I know globalism (for want of a better word) has so far been able to destroy or absorb anything thrown at it, but you lose until you win. So I don’t see political risk for the elites decreasing, and if they run true to form, they’ll double down on #FAIL. May you live in interesting times.
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE June 7, 2013 |
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE May 31, 2013 |
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