Employers Aren’t Just Whining – the “Skills Gap” Is Real

[lpetrich]

The world according to Athena:

Step 1: Hire someone
Step 2: Pay them low wages
Step 3: Profit

Businesses don't fail to make profits when they follow these three simple steps

So you're saying that she's right?

 

[untermensche]

The most important thing to the people who run businesses is maintaining the artificial and unneeded dichotomy of workers and management. That is how those few at the top are able to take so much. In this artificial and unneeded system of exploitation all decision making power has been removed from workers, and it is very important to keep workers in their place.

One of the ways you keep workers in their place is to create working structures that require workers with next to no training. The more replaceable the worker the better.

Another way is to block workers from climbing to positions of power. These positions are all reserved for "special" people, who do not rise to the top but are placed there by dictate.

The whole system is constructed so most workers remain as helpless as possible. The masters at the top need easy pickings.

And so we wonder why we find so many workers who have been plagued with a poor education and little practical training.

In a worker based system as opposed to a master based system things would be different.

 

[Togo]

I think it's a cultural problem. Companies are very much focused on the short term. Staff development requires longer-term thinking. Many companies are quite happy to let go highly skilled people that they don't need this year to declare a profit, and then spend twice that hiring back people next year. They don't want to spend money to train people, even if it's only in their own systems. They rely on contractors for critical projects, rather than keep a team in house that might be effectively idle for some of the year.

I work for a software company. We're allowed to hire people, but not to train anyone. Training takes too much time from skilled staff. I'm allowed, if I get permission, to spend an hour a month training people. I end up conspiring with graduates to hold unrelated meetings so they can get some training from me on the sly. So we have three or four headhunters on contract scouring the market for our very very obscure speciality that is presently in high demand, but I can't train up people who already work for us that want to learn. For reference I can train someone totally unskilled do most of my job in about 2 months, taking 5-6 hours a week.

There is a skills gap. It's created by the companies complaining about the skills gap, who don't place a value on acquiring and retaining skilled staff. If you're a building a factory, you make sure you can get bricks well in advance. You don't wait until the last possible minute, suddenly discover that bricks are expensive and in high demand, and go around trying to find bricks here and there that no one else is using. Nor do you try and get the government to try and leave piles of bricks around in case people need them. You actually plan ahead to have the tools to do the job.

 

[rousseau]

If you had read the OP, you'd notice that it is not the unhired people whining they cannot get a well-paying job. It is the employer who is whining. If employers cannot find the right people at the offered compensation, then they are not offering a high enough compensation. That is how markets - labor or product - operate. Employers whining about no qualified employees at the offered compensation is equivalent to a banana consumer blaming farmers for not offering bananas for sale at 1 cent per pound.

If you had read the OP, you would have seen that the compensation isn't the problem being identified here - it's specific types of advanced skills. And employers are willing to pay for those specific skills - when they can find them. But they're not willing to pay top dollar to someone who does not have the needed skills.

I think you need to understand how markets work. If employers cannot find "qualified" people to work for their offered compensation, then the employers are not offering enough to induce those qualified people to work for them. It really is that simple.

Then it comes back to a math problem: employers can't afford to lure existing skilled employees because their demand is too high and supply is too low. Either they can afford skilled workers but don't really need them, in which case their isn't a real demand for skilled workers, or they need skilled workers but can't afford them, meaning the supply of skilled workers is too low, and the problem is real.

I think we really need to re-define what we mean by a 'skill shortage': there isn't a need for skilled workers, there is a desire for skilled workers.

Just to re-iterate: this ^^^

 

[ksen]

I think it's a cultural problem. Companies are very much focused on the short term.

That's impossible. In the poverty remix thread Loren has assured us that the Masters of the Universe have cornered the long term thinking market.

 

[Sarpedon]

Rich Republicans spend decades sabotaging public education, then complain about lack of skills in the workforce.

And then they turn around and want us to believe that they are rich because they are smart.

 

[rousseau]

Rich Republicans spend decades sabotaging public education, then complain about lack of skills in the workforce.

And then they turn around and want us to believe that they are rich because they are smart.

Maybe, but I'd say that the term 'rich republicans' doesn't actually signify anything in the context of this problem. Are all business owners who want skilled workers republican? Or even rich?

I don't see what this has to do with left and right ideas besides the fact that the right tends to be pro-corporation.

 

[ksen]

Rich Republicans spend decades sabotaging public education, then complain about lack of skills in the workforce.

And then they turn around and want us to believe that they are rich because they are smart.

I like your point.

But there really is no skills shortage. People are trainable. What there is a lack of is a lack of willingness on behalf of corporations to keep their employees trained in the relevant technologies.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

Rich Republicans spend decades sabotaging public education, then complain about lack of skills in the workforce.

And then they turn around and want us to believe that they are rich because they are smart.

I like your point.

But there really is no skills shortage. People are trainable. What there is a lack of is a lack of willingness on behalf of corporations to keep their employees trained in the relevant technologies.

management will say that they don't want to spend the money on training employees and then having those employees leave for better jobs. Now the obvious answer to this is to make the job at this company better and then your employees won't want to leave, but that would mean you would have as a corporate culture to think your employees were worth treating like human beings and not replaceable cogs in a machine.

 

[Under the Rose]

I like your point.

But there really is no skills shortage. People are trainable. What there is a lack of is a lack of willingness on behalf of corporations to keep their employees trained in the relevant technologies.

management will say that they don't want to spend the money on training employees and then having those employees leave for better jobs. Now the obvious answer to this is to make the job at this company better and then your employees won't want to leave, but that would mean you would have as a corporate culture to think your employees were worth treating like human beings and not replaceable cogs in a machine.

Indeed.

It is time to emphasize that these are 'Human resources', not 'Resources', human. My co-worker calls it 'The Henry Ford Mentality'. Dumb down every job so that even an idiot can perform it by mechanizing as much as possible. Therefore, you have no need to pay high wages because very few skills are need to direct the technology.

The problem is, with technology changing so fast, more expertise than anticipated is coming into need and the chickens are coming home to roost, it would seem.

 

[Bronzeage]

I live in a city of about 600,000 people. As of today, I know of five job openings which would pay $75K or better for a qualified person. It takes about ten years to accumulate the experience and training needed to perform the job. The work is hard and those qualified are aging out of the work force. There are not five such people in this city who do not already have such a job. This situation is the direct result of the reduction in corporate training programs over the past 30 years.

What this actually shows is that either this position, or perhaps the ones that lead up to it are underpaid. Your workforce is aging out because the job isn't attractive.

No shit? That is exactly the case.

 

[Canard DuJour]

Why should employees be the one to bear the risk of paying to learn a whole new skill set when all they have to go on is their best guess and then just pray that they guessed right and that by the time they are done what they've learned will already be outdated?

It's a stupid system.

The flip side to that argument is equally valid though. Why should employers be the ones to bear the risk of paying to teach someone a valuable and competitive skill set, in addition to a comfortable salary, when all they have to go on is their best guess and just pray that they guessed right and that by the time they're done investing in that training the employee will still stick around and not move to a competitor?

Because, if we're to believe the article, the 'scarce' specialisms are typically too narrow and job-specific for it to work any other way. Why should any particular employer invest in training when competitors can poach employees with the money saved by not training? They probably shouldn't. But then employers shoot themselves in the collective foot, as everyone waits for everyone else to do the training bit. It's decades of labour casualisation (subcontracting, outsourcing, deregulation, undermining labour laws and unions etc) backfiring on employers. But with no winners.

 

[Under the Rose]

Because, if we're to believe the article, the 'scarce' specialisms are typically too narrow and job-specific for it to work any other way. Why should any particular employer invest in training when competitors can poach employees with the money saved by not training? They probably shouldn't. But then employers shoot themselves in the collective foot, as everyone waits for everyone else to do the training bit. It's decades of labour casualisation (subcontracting, outsourcing, deregulation, undermining labour laws and unions etc) backfiring on employers. But with no winners.

Precisely my point about 'the chickens coming home to roost'.
Reminds me of emergency services investment in training and resources when I was a volunteer fire-fighter. No one wants to tie up money in equipment and training that they hope will never be needed, yet when disaster strikes they expect immediate, professional help to appear magically just because they dialed 911.

Now it's 'the ostrich mentality'. Everyone has their head stuck in the sand so that they can deny seeing the obvious results of past practices. For myself, diversity is my skill set along with a willingness to work shifts that others do not want. Thus far, it has stood me in good stead, better than being over-qualified with a huge student debt to pay down.

We really have had a serious disconnect between education and industry for quite a long time now. This isn't new, merely manifesting in somewhat new ways.