2010
Sloppy NY Times reporting about skills mismatch
Today The New York Times ran a front page story on how the “skills shortage” is having a negative effect on manufacturing in the United States. The article reports that manufacturing firms are not able to find the highly skilled employees they are seeking for $15 to $20 an hour, and can’t find job applicants who come with the highly technical, specialized skills required for the work.
Although the Times is not typically known for its pro-business reporting, this article strikes me as frightfully one-sided. It fails to consider that employers’ complaints about skill shortages may simply result from below-market wages and/or miserable investments in training.
If U.S. manufacturing is to get the skilled workers it needs, then it will have to compete with the other sectors in which these workers are in demand and can find jobs (even in a labor market with dreadfully high unemployment). And if manufacturers want highly-trained workers, then they need to invest in training (which far too many do too little of).
The classic economic symptom of a declining firm is a failure to invest. When manufacturers complain about the shortage of skilled workers, they are confusing the symptom with the problem. If they would raise wages and/or invest in training people, they’d find that the apparent “shortage” would begin to disappear.
Tagged skill shortages