The MIT Technology Review presents more evidence that the “skills gap” that’s the basis of so much policy is a myth. Here’s the meat of it:
The results yield a number of surprises. First, persistent hiring problems are less widespread than many pundits and industry representatives claim. A few years back, Paul Osterman of MIT’s Sloan School of Management and I found that less than a quarter of manufacturing plants had one or more production-Âworker vacancies that had lasted for three months or more. By contrast, industry claims at the time were that three-Âquarters or more faced a persistent inability to hire skilled workers.
More recently, I have looked for signs of hiring trouble in IT and clinical laboratory occupations. Given a tighter labor market and higher educational requirements for these entry-level technical jobs, it would be reasonable to expect hiring to be more difficult. Not so. Only 15 percent of IT help desks report extended vacancies in technician positions. While the results do show higher levels of long-term lab-tech openings, it turns out that many of these are concentrated in the overnight shift and thus reflect inadequate compensation for difficult working conditions, not a structural skill deficiency. A little over a quarter of clinical diagnostic labs report at least one long-term vacancy.
The survey results do show some hiring challenges, but not for the reasons posited by the conventional skill-gap narrative. In fact, the data reveal that high-tech and cutting-edge establishments do not have greater hiring difficulties than other establishments. Furthermore, the data imply that we should be careful about calling for more technical skills without specifying which skills we are talking about. It is quite common to hear advocates—and even academics—assert that the answer to the nation’s labor-market and economic-growth challenges is for workers to acquire more science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) skills. However, my data show that employers looking for higher-level computer skills generally do not have a harder time filling job openings. Manufacturers requiring higher-level math do sometimes have more hiring challenges, but math requirements are not a problem for IT help desks or clinical labs.
So what are the skill requirements most consistently associated with hiring difficulties? In manufacturing, it’s higher-level reading, while for help-desk technicians it’s higher-level writing. Proponents of the skill-gap theory sometimes assert that the problem, if not a lack of STEM skills, is actually the result of a poor attitude or inadequate soft skills among younger workers. But while demand for a few soft skills—like the ability to initiate new tasks without guidance from management—is occasionally predictive of hiring problems, most soft-skill demands, including requirements for cooperation and teamwork, are not.
What I think is not mythical is a lack of willingness of employers to pay what workers with the skills and experience they claim to seek are worth. They’re confident that if they complain loudly enough they’ll be able to import workers at lower wages.
I haven’t done a ton of research but anecdotally there is a gap in the skilled trades.
This sounds about right to me, especially for night work and weekends. No one wants to work those shifts, and no one wants to pay people extra to do them. I have heard the same as Andy about the trades, but would love to see a similar analysis to see if it is true.
Steve
I cant speak to their methodology. I cant speak to your world, which apparently is mostly IT. I cant speak to Steves world. I can definitively speak to my world (and my brother in laws – agribusiness) . We make widgets. Blood and guts manufacturing. We can raise and raise wages, but skills don’t magically appear. Nor does work ethic.
Of course you can say “pay them two hundred dollars an hour” but then you run up against the ability to operate and price to the consumers willingness to pay, and in the absurd, a million dollars an hour. Theyd work an hour and retire.
Its a vexing issue. Perhaps in general, or as part of the NK problem, we will see how cheap labor vs consumer purchasing power will shake out. That will be quite an experiment.
There is another source of problems and it’s something I’ve been warning about for a long time: apprentices become journeymen who become masters. You can’t just get journeymen and masters out of nowhere. You’ve got to hire apprentices.
As to work ethic any manager who expects to receive loyalty without giving loyalty is dreaming.
35 years ago almost all of my clients were manufacturers. Most of those have either been acquired by foreign concerns or gone out of business due to overseas competition. I haven’t had a new name manufacturing client in decades.
These days most of my clients are government, health care, retail, IT, insurance, or banking. Like the growth parts of the economy.
Concerning loyalty – I agree, which is why we try very, very hard to protect people and engender loyalty and trust. It works both ways, though.
As for your business model – I think that’s unfortunate. It may explain how we sometimes seem to pass like ships in the night on issues. Manufacturing is alive and well. But you really need to work at it. Admittedly, I’m originally a process engineer from a basic industry. But it still excites me more than retail, IT etc.