lpetrich
Contributor
So you're saying that she's right?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?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
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.
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.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.
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.
I think it's a cultural problem. Companies are very much focused on the short term.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.