Reply #34: Skilled Labor in High Demand

[54anickel]

Employers Lament Declining Ranks of Capable Workers

I call bullshit on this article. Sure employers may be having a harded time finding people with the required education to hire. Do you think part of that problem is because they are starting at 8 bucks an hour? They want educated employees to work for non-educated wages! Education ain't cheap folks. They also want younger workers that will help keep down the costs of heathcare. I'll agree that our public schools could use some improvements, but employers seem to want folks to have all kinds of smarts AND work for less.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A30139-2004Aug24.html

David L. Hurley is eager to hire new workers at his Florida surveying company and isn't asking for much: Only a dozen or so people with enough basic math to learn the software he uses to make blueprints, and enough basic sense to show up on time.

But after weeks of want ads and recruiting, he has drawn a conclusion: The workers aren't out there. While there are plenty of people who "can fog a mirror" and might be able to do grunt work on a survey crew for $8.50 an hour, Hurley said the economy has run short of people with the types of basic skills he could mold into a $20-per-hour survey crew chief.

"I would add 15 people tomorrow if I could find them," said Hurley, president of Landmark Engineering & Surveying Corp. of Tampa. "We need people with some knowledge of trigonometry and geometry. It's really just arithmetic. We're turning down work because we don't have the people."

To explain why wage and job growth has remained weak during a nearly three-year period of economic expansion, economists point to a complicated set of dynamics.

Developing countries like India have become increasingly competitive in global markets, offering well-trained workers at comparatively cut-rate prices. American workers have become steadily more productive -- a two-edged sword that makes each employee more valuable but which has largely boosted company profits instead of wages and hiring. The decline of organized labor and the stagnation of the federal minimum wage have helped suppress what workers are paid, say analysts like Harry Holzer, a Georgetown University professor and former chief Labor Department economist during the Clinton administration.

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