Okay, I’ll Bite. What Skills?

Michael Bloomberg (former mayor of New York and owner of the Bloomberg news empire) and Jamie Dimon (CEO of JPMorgan Chase) take to Bloomberg View to argue for the teaching of “skills schools aren’t teaching”:

We will not solve the critical challenges of poverty, underemployment, wage stagnation and bulging prisons unless we get serious about investing in effective programs that prepare kids who are not immediately college-bound for middle-class jobs. Other countries — such as Germany and Switzerland — have figured this out. We must, too.

About 70 percent of young Americans, and 83 percent of blacks and Hispanics, do not earn a bachelor’s degree by age 29. Most who attend community college don’t graduate. And without having gained career-focused skills in high schools, many are getting left behind.

It used to be that a high-school diploma was enough to qualify for a job at the local factory that paid wages high enough to buy a home and raise a family. Those days are long gone. There are still more than 12 million manufacturing jobs in the U.S., down from a high of nearly 20 million in 1979. But most require far more skill than they once did. A high-school diploma no longer cuts it.

Okay, I’ll bite. What skills? They don’t say. Let me present a few facts

  1. Half of big city students don’t graduate from high school on time and a third don’t graduate in five years.
  2. Nearly 20% of high school graduates can’t read and nobody knows how many more are functionally illiterate. That hasn’t changed in more than a decade.
  3. Wages haven’t been growing for STEM workers for more than 15 years. Mssrs. Bloomberg and Dimon might want to google “market clearing price”.
  4. Technical skills, by and large, have a short shelf life. Nowadays by the time you’ve learned one it’s already obsolete. That’s a big problem for anybody who gets involved with a large, multi-year project. When the project is done, so is their career.
  5. Since the Great Recession, the areas of the economy that have hired the most new workers are retail, hospitality, and healthcare (and in healthcare the jobs that have grown the most are those that need the fewest skills).
  6. Among high school students, about 10% don’t speak English at all and in many big cities a quarter or more don’t speak English at home.

So, here’s my proposal for the skills the schools should teach: readin’, writin’, ‘rithmetic, English.

Now, I’d like to ask Mr. Dimon a question. When was the last time he hired someone who hadn’t graduated from one of the top 10 colleges in the country? (You know, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, Stanford, University of Chicago, etc.)

I’m all for increasing the amount of vocational training. I think it’s a necessity. Here’s another necessity. We need to create a lot more jobs that are worth getting training for.

15 comments… add one
  • bob sykes Link

    For the last 30 years, real incomes for middle and working class people have been trending down, slowly and imperceptibly for the middle class, more rapidly and noticeable for the working class. There are at least four causes: women in the work force, immigration (legal, illegal, H1B), automation, off-shoring manufacturing and free trade. If you want to do something about incomes and employment change those things. A moratorium on immigration, a roundup of illegals and a protectionist trade policy would undo most of the damage.

    Free trade lunatics claim that free trade makes the economy grow faster, and I believe them. But what they don’t tell you is that ALL of the benefits accrue to the Ruling Class.

    As to education, the great majority of the uneducated youth are black or Mexican. About half the black population is uneducable because they have genetically low IQ’s. These people have literally no economic value or function and can only live by welfare and/or crime, which by and large they do. There are uneducable whites, too, but there are far fewer of them.

    Automation is a threat to everyone’s job, not just factory and fast food workers. It began to reduce entry level engineering jobs a generation ago. (When was the last time you saw a 4 to 5 many survey party; now it’s generally 1 man.) Entry level lawyer positions are disappearing, too, especially at the high-salary Big Law firms. As time goes on, more of us will find ourselves in the same position as blacks, no economic value or function. There is an EBT card in your future.

  • walt moffett Link

    Good points made about the 3R’s. Yet I notice a nearby auto plant requires a new hires to undergo six weeks of basically how to show up on time, how to wear a uniform, form orderly lines, how to work in groups, how to read metric measurements, shop math, stand around and wait as well as basic work floor procedures and other things that make HR happy. Somehow, I think a recent high school graduate would know most of this.

  • how to show up on time, how to wear a uniform, form orderly lines, how to work in groups

    All things I learned in kindergarten and I’m guessing you did, too.

  • ... Link

    Any training you have to pay for yourself without a signed contract from an employer isn’t worth a damn.

  • Basically, I agree with you, Ellipsis. Sadly, those days are gone. Employers have a “build to suit” mindset these days.

  • walt moffett Link

    Yet now, Kindergarten is about individual self worth, spontaneous learning, instead of the basics of civilized behavior.

    Re: job/skill training, anything that increases your ability to use (and maintain) tools and plan a task is worth paying for, whether its diesel repair, lock smithing or bartending. There is always steady work for those not afraid to chip a nail and regard Lava as kiddie hand soap.

  • steve Link

    “There is always steady work for those not afraid to chip a nail and regard Lava as kiddie hand soap.”

    Actually, no. The construction slowdown after the mortgage crisis had a lot of good carpenters, roofers, plumbers, electricians, etc out of work. Bartending, OTOH, is a good bet, but we can’t all be bartenders. I think a good basic education with an emphasis on learning how to learn is the way to go, with a bit of extra math.

    Contra Walt, IIRC, the data shows that companies have pretty much greatly slowed down spending on training their employees.

    Steve

  • ... Link

    Basically, I agree with you, Ellipsis. Sadly, those days are gone. Employers have a “build to suit” mindset these days.

    And an “import to suit” mindset as well.

  • Guarneri Link

    It is a sad commentary that exotic solutions are proposed when the schools, and families, have failed to impart even the 3R basics. I think Steve adds an important perspective ( I think a good basic education with an emphasis on learning how to learn is the way to go, with a bit of extra math.) with “how to learn.” The pace of change today dictates that, else risk becoming a dinosaur.

    Representing the employers side to the failure to train comments, would employees sign a contract to stay for 5 years if trained? Last time I looked slavery had been outlawed and non-competes not based in capital consideration rarely enforceable. Most on the job training must be looked at as part of the total cost to employ.

  • Most on the job training must be looked at as part of the total cost to employ.

    The question, of course, is who bears the cost? Nowadays my observation has been that prospective employees are expected to bear the cost and employer-supported training has become increasingly rare.

    In a slack labor market in which wages are stagnant, that’s a form of reducing wages, no?

  • Guarneri Link

    I concur that the balance of power has shifted to the employee, although I’d place the date far earlier than the recent slack labor markets I suspect you refer to. (As a whole host of employment costs have been added over the years). Employers are, for example, picking up what the school system does not.

    It still is the case that specific training skills are put in employees pockets and shopped down the street. Alas, I have no slick solution.

  • walt moffett Link

    Not all jobs are in construction, hospitals always need cleaners, lawns have to be mowed, floor scrubbers and lawn mowers repaired, painters restrained and strapped down on gurneys while they detox, etc.

  • I’ve known some painters who could use being restrained but I don’t think that’s what you meant.

  • ... Link

    A pretty big chunk of the population can’t learn “how to learn” – it is beyond them.

    But hey, why not even more money for schools, right? That must be the solution.

  • Andy Link

    The 3R’s and “learning how to learn” is great in theory, but I don’t think that helps most people gets jobs in a world dependent on credentials, certifications, provable experience or knowing the right person. You can’t demonstrate “learning how to learn” on a resume, particularly for any firm that uses filtering to weed out applicants.

    Drew,

    “I concur that the balance of power has shifted to the employee”

    typo?

Leave a Comment