Businesses say they can't find qualified workers. Are they right?

[ksen]

http://www.vox.com/2014/5/13/5713304/is-there-a-skills-gap-small-businesses-seem-to-think-so

Small business confidence has hit its highest point since 2007, according to a new survey from the National Federation of Independent Business.

That's great news, but one area where businesses aren't feeling confident is in the qualifications of the people applying to their job openings.

Today, 41 percent of small businesses say they have few or no qualified applicants for the jobs they have open, up nearly 10 percentage points from three years ago and 16 points up from 2009.

I call bullshit on the employers claiming they can't find qualified workers.

 

[funinspace]

I'll say ditto on the BS. If there was any real shortage of skilled workers at large, there would be obvious wage increase pressures.

Not that there aren't pockets of shortages, like in the oil industry, both in localities and occupations. I understand that wages for welders in the oil industry have jumped quite a bit. And workers are in short supply in parts of the Dakotas...don't know if their wages are seeing big increases. The IT field is evidently seeing modest wage increases recently, but hardly enough to describe a 'shortage'.

PS Fuck…I read thru that article and thought about that chart on percent not finding qualified candidates. Even in the trough of the worst recession since the GD, at least 25% of the companies regularly said they couldn’t find someone. What BS, those companies giving such an answer were either idiots or liars. Dec 2008 provided the low number of 21%. Considering this stupidity, I’d shave 23 (I figured there still could be a real 2% even at the worst) percentage points right off the top of this BS indicator. So 41 becomes 18%...

 

[rousseau]

In Ontario, universities are pumping out graduates with no skills at a pretty high rate, and in my experience learning a skilled trade there are about 15-20 competent people out of around 200 who initially entered the program. So there's that.

 

[doubtingt]

The idea that any objective and valid measure of unqualified applicants for job openings could increase from 31% in Feb of 2012 to 41% just 24 months later is patently absurd. What the data show is that this self-report measure of qualified applicants is highly unreliable and invalid.

 

[ksen]

I could maybe believe that 41% of companies are having a hard time finding people to fit their ridiculously narrow qualifications, i.e. one particular brand of software that in reality does the same thing every other type of software in that field does but just has the buttons in a different place.

I look around every now and then and always come away from the effort shaking my head at the inane job qualifications businesses put in their ads.

- - - Updated - - -

In Ontario, universities are pumping out graduates with no skills at a pretty high rate, and in my experience learning a skilled trade there are about 15-20 competent people out of around 200 who initially entered the program. So there's that.

That might be a bit of a contributory factor but it used to be companies took the time to train new employees. Currently businesses don't want to train people because it costs money.

 

[Jarhyn]

The most unreasonable thing about these measures is when you evaluate the qualifications demanded. Years of experience for a position a grad could do easily. Psych profiles no real person over the age of 25 could pass without lying their ass off. Requirements for technicians and engineers and support persons that include being a SOCIAL genius. Or letting programmers evaluate other programmers on PERSONALITY...

 

[laughing dog]

I wonder if the more accurate claim is that businesses cannot find qualified candidates at the offered compensation.

 

[ksen]

Yep, I bet that's also a big part of it.

I've seen ads requiring a bachelor's degree in accounting with years and years of experience and a starting pay in the mid to high $30k's.

Ridiculous.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I'll say ditto on the BS. If there was any real shortage of skilled workers at large, there would be obvious wage increase pressures.

Not that there aren't pockets of shortages, like in the oil industry, both in localities and occupations. I understand that wages for welders in the oil industry have jumped quite a bit. And workers are in short supply in parts of the Dakotas...don't know if their wages are seeing big increases. The IT field is evidently seeing modest wage increases recently, but hardly enough to describe a 'shortage'.

PS Fuck…I read thru that article and thought about that chart on percent not finding qualified candidates. Even in the trough of the worst recession since the GD, at least 25% of the companies regularly said they couldn’t find someone. What BS, those companies giving such an answer were either idiots or liars. Dec 2008 provided the low number of 21%. Considering this stupidity, I’d shave 23 (I figured there still could be a real 2% even at the worst) percentage points right off the top of this BS indicator. So 41 becomes 18%...

Agreed.

What's actually going on here is that employers are looking for perfect employees, not to mention how insane the resume game has gotten these days.

Job seekers send out crazy numbers of resumes. This means employers get flooded with resumes. They respond by filtering these by automatic or semi-automatic means. Those filters end up discarding plenty of people who could do the job but whose resumes for some reason are less than perfect. (An example of this is many companies refusing to hire the unemployed.)


Also, in the IT area a lot of it is trying to get approval to hire cheap H1-Bs. Many big tech firms don't even try to hire Americans.


I have proposed a few things that I think would help the situation:

1) H1-Bs: Tied to the unemployment rate in the area & field. If the unemployment rate is above x% there will be no H1-B visas issued there.

2) The unemployed: Add another category of do-not-ask information: When you did something. Resumes would not give dates for anything, just durations. Likewise, your employment status would be do-not-ask.


Also, I would like to see some means by which job seekers would be limited in the number of jobs they could apply for per day--make them pick good fits rather than the current game of shotgun. I don't see how to make it work, though.

 

[Under the Rose]

I wonder if the more accurate claim is that businesses cannot find qualified candidates at the offered compensation.

Bingo!

'Labor Management' wants to have the most skilled workers, for the lowest costs, preferably working part-time so that they do not have to offer significant benefits because a good benefit package can contribute up to 1/3 of the cost of compensating an employee. With part-time workers, they reserve the right to cut hours during slower economic periods and then they wonder why employees are not lining up? In addition, many corporations restrict the ability of their employees to hold a second job by denying them access to any other business that could even remotely be construed as competition.

An increasing percentage of the available part-time, experienced work force is now reaching the age of retirement. We have increasingly better educated younger workers who in some cases are not interested in physical work and we also have a significant number of young workers who just plain are not interested in any work that is not related to on-line gaming and social media. I make that comment because I personally know and am also related by marriage to a few who fit that description.

 

[Bronzeage]

I wonder if the more accurate claim is that businesses cannot find qualified candidates at the offered compensation.

Thank you. This is exactly the problem.

If one wants to see an economic model of this in full scale, watch the public school system in any city over the next 10 years.

 

[funinspace]

Also, in the IT area a lot of it is trying to get approval to hire cheap H1-Bs. Many big tech firms don't even try to hire Americans.


I have proposed a few things that I think would help the situation:

1) H1-Bs: Tied to the unemployment rate in the area & field. If the unemployment rate is above x% there will be no H1-B visas issued there.

My thought on the whole H1-B visa thing is somewhat different, though the above could work as well. Part of the issues is that companies whine that they are being prevented via anti-immigration laws from catching those foreign ‘rocket scientists’. Which is BS, as the H1-B visa IT worker is getting roughly $2-3k less salary than a CS graduate (at least the last time I read about it). Just set the minimum salary for said occupation to something like 120% of the average for the field in the local cost of living area (which the govt. already has data for). No company will want to hire 4 mediocre imported DBA’s even if they are willing to work 80 hours a week, when they have to actually pay them what a qualified American is worth. But if the person is that ‘rocket scientist’ they claim to be clamoring for, they will be quite willing to pay that person 150% of average or more. I bet we would see an 80-95% drop in H1-B hiring….for good reason.

2) The unemployed: Add another category of do-not-ask information: When you did something. Resumes would not give dates for anything, just durations. Likewise, your employment status would be do-not-ask.

Interesting idea…so far nothing jumps out at me as to why it would cause any real problems.

 

[funinspace]

An increasing percentage of the available part-time, experienced work force is now reaching the age of retirement. We have increasingly better educated younger workers who in some cases are not interested in physical work and we also have a significant number of young workers who just plain are not interested in any work that is not related to on-line gaming and social media. I make that comment because I personally know and am also related by marriage to a few who fit that description.

Wait just a second there cowgirl...I have it on good word from a few dimwitted, redneck, evangelical, lazy ass nephews, that they would be doing much better in this brave new world for young people, if the govt. would just stop helping those lazy welfare cheats and throw all all the illegal immigrants. Between them and socialist Obama, its just messing up our great country.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

My thought on the whole H1-B visa thing is somewhat different, though the above could work as well. Part of the issues is that companies whine that they are being prevented via anti-immigration laws from catching those foreign ‘rocket scientists’. Which is BS, as the H1-B visa IT worker is getting roughly $2-3k less salary than a CS graduate (at least the last time I read about it). Just set the minimum salary for said occupation to something like 120% of the average for the field in the local cost of living area (which the govt. already has data for). No company will want to hire 4 mediocre imported DBA’s even if they are willing to work 80 hours a week, when they have to actually pay them what a qualified American is worth. But if the person is that ‘rocket scientist’ they claim to be clamoring for, they will be quite willing to pay that person 150% of average or more. I bet we would see an 80-95% drop in H1-B hiring….for good reason.

That's a good idea. One of the main checks on importing foreign workers should be that they don't undercut local salaries. If they can't find anybody and they need to get the job done, they can raise the salary of the position and hire abroad. It shouldn't be a way to get cheap workers, however.

 

[rousseau]

I wonder if the more accurate claim is that businesses cannot find qualified candidates at the offered compensation.

In my field (software) most companies are looking for exceedingly skilled people which are in chronic short supply. Those who are skilled enough to get a high wage are usually already employed.

I'm pretty close to entry level, almost an intermediate developer, and I'm constantly being contacted for positions looking for experience that I am nowhere close to having. So at least in my field there's a big skill shortage, and those who actually have skill are usually won out by the highest bidder, leaving small businesses left with those who are somewhere around incompetent.

All that said, in my field in particular actually training your employees is what businesses should be doing.

 

[coloradoatheist]

i wish the survey authors would try and investigate more, and dive more into what is wanted and what is missing. Businesses can't be too long without essential jobs so they would either need to hire and train, or hire. Or as rousseau talked about with software engineering, hiring someone that can't do the job may be worse than not hiring if you spend more energy trying to fix the mistakes.

 

[funinspace]

I wonder if the more accurate claim is that businesses cannot find qualified candidates at the offered compensation.

In my field (software) most companies are looking for exceedingly skilled people which are in chronic short supply. Those who are skilled enough to get a high wage are usually already employed.

I'm pretty close to entry level, almost an intermediate developer, and I'm constantly being contacted for positions looking for experience that I am nowhere close to having. So at least in my field there's a big skill shortage, and those who actually have skill are usually won out by the highest bidder, leaving small businesses left with those who are somewhere around incompetent.

These days I get the occasional head hunter contacting me off of a resume that landed hither or yonder from a few years back. Funny thing was back in 1999, I wanted out of the state I was living in, and was hired by a company that flew me out for the final interview, then flew me out again so I could go house shopping, paid my house selling costs, and paid for the movers. They also paid for my wife to fly along both times as well. That was when there was a real shortage. You don’t see much of that today. Oh, I’m in the IT field…

I have a friend who got their law degree almost 2 years ago, and landed a position about 2 months after passing the bar. He was telling me that in times past, many lawyers were hired right out of school before they passed the bar exams, and then essentially paid them to study for the exams. Evidently that is mostly gone as well.

All that said, in my field in particular actually training your employees is what businesses should be doing.

It sure seemed like that happened a lot more in the 1990’s.

 

[rousseau]

i wish the survey authors would try and investigate more, and dive more into what is wanted and what is missing. Businesses can't be too long without essential jobs so they would either need to hire and train, or hire. Or as rousseau talked about with software engineering, hiring someone that can't do the job may be worse than not hiring if you spend more energy trying to fix the mistakes.

Although I think there's something to be said for hiring people with little experience but a little bit of brains behind them. I went out on co-op last year for 8 months, my first time in industry, and for the first while I was nearly useless and oblivious, but after about four or five months I reached an intermediate level, and was outperforming some of the senior devs. That kind of productivity comes once you've had an excess of exposure to a businesses internal systems and processes, and is something any developer is going to have to go through, junior or senior, when faced with a new technology. In fact, after 6 months on the job I was training a guy who had been in the field for two decades.

So if companies can switch their focus to smart people, not experienced people, they'll likely gain some great employees. The problem comes when you pick up people with no ability to learn or problem solve.

 

[laughing dog]

I wonder if the more accurate claim is that businesses cannot find qualified candidates at the offered compensation.

In my field (software) most companies are looking for exceedingly skilled people which are in chronic short supply. Those who are skilled enough to get a high wage are usually already employed.

Perhaps, but a shortage indicates that the amount people wish to purchase at the market price exceeds the amount people are willing to sell. If there is truly a shortage for people with characteristics X, then the market compensation is too low for those people. Raising compensation in this instance sends two messages. First, it may induce more people to offer their services over time. Second, it may induce firms to reconsider their structure and needs and find alternative methods to achieve their goals.

If firms are cannot find people with the desired qualifications at the offered compensation, it is a market signal to those firms that their expectations are unrealistic at the offered compensation.

 

[funinspace]

I wonder if the more accurate claim is that businesses cannot find qualified candidates at the offered compensation.

In my field (software) most companies are looking for exceedingly skilled people which are in chronic short supply. Those who are skilled enough to get a high wage are usually already employed.

Perhaps, but a shortage indicates that the amount people wish to purchase at the market price exceeds the amount people are willing to sell. If there is truly a shortage for people with characteristics X, then the market compensation is too low for those people. Raising compensation in this instance sends two messages. First, it may induce more people to offer their services over time. Second, it may induce firms to reconsider their structure and needs and find alternative methods to achieve their goals.

If firms are cannot find people with the desired qualifications at the offered compensation, it is a market signal to those firms that their expectations are unrealistic at the offered compensation.

Or it is a market signal to those firms to increase their lobbying efforts upon their Congressional Critters