[jogiba]

We all constantly hear about the shortage of jobs – and job creation – in the country, and how that is key to our economic rebound.

So it came as a fairly big surprise to read that in fact we have 3 million job openings today in search of suitable candidates.

One of the reasons for that is the available skills in the labor pool aren’t aligned with the available jobs.

“There’s a tremendous mismatch in the jobs market right now,” states James Manyika, one of the authors of a new McKinsey study An Economy That Works: Job Creation and America’s Future.

“It runs across skill set, gender, class and geography.”

It’s a fascinating, comprehensive report, but in the event you don’t want to take the time to pore through 100 pages, let me give you the highlights, at least in the aforementioned area of the unfilled job openings.

In their survey, McKinsey finds nearly two-thirds of business executives say they routinely have difficulty filling certain positions. The top reason they cite is lack of specific qualifications or experience.

That skill/experience mismatch may pose bigger problems for job creation in the future. Although half of the companies in the same report they will expand employment in 2011, 40% say they have also had positions open for six months or more because they can’t find the right candidates.

Why Are There 3 Million Unfilled Job Openings in America Right Now?

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[shooz]

They sent the Mexicans home and kept the American'ts?

[Nesster]

The call for STEM - Science, Tech, Engineering, Math - education in the McKinsey report is in the right direction. Certainly all who have ability in that direction ought to consider it as the surest way to employment.

Once in the field, one has to constantly renew one's skills, the pace of technology changes is very rapid and you can end up 'legacy' within a few years.

But that's for people with at least some aptitude in this direction, and not all have equal aptitude even if they are STEM types. There are plenty of people who no fault of their own - or that of the educational system - simply can't do STEM type of thinking. I suppose there are jobs as barbers/hairdressers/tatto artists/bartenders and the like for these folks?

[Parallax]

From Christmas Vacation:


Clark: "How can they have nothing for their children?"

Ellen: "Well, he's been out of work for close to seven years."

Clark: "In seven years, he couldn't find a job?"

Ellen: "Catherine says he's been holding out for a management position."

[magkelly]

The problem is the longer you are out of work the less likely you will be hired for any job. Also there is the whole "must be bilingual, must be able to lift 50lbs" criteria for practically every position out there now. Unless you are a major tech head, it's not so easy, and even the engineer wannabes are only being offered a pittance salary a lot of the time to start.

There was a big banking story a while back about how the banks are going to start charging big depositors for keeping too much cash in their corporate accounts. It seems that corporations are far more intent these days upon working the skeleton crews they have now to death so they can just bank as much as they can while avoiding hiring anyone else on. I'm seeing that all over, not just in the office.

Retail, you go into any store now and you're lucky to find a sales clerk or two, and usually there's only one or two cashiers open too, even when they have lines a mile long. Even at Christmas, they put signs out, but seldom hire hardly anyone. Even the p/t who are on permanently can't get more than 20 hours a week, if that, and yet the store is supposed to function and make money for the corporation with far less than a full staff.

I have no respect for corporate business. I have no sympathy. They created this mess. They keep making money hand over fist but they won't hire anyone back? That's just lame. They talk about how people are not spending. Well, maybe if they ever had a decent paycheck they would....

[dadipentak]

I have no respect for corporate business. I have no sympathy. They created this mess. They keep making money hand over fist but they won't hire anyone back? That's just lame. They talk about how people are not spending. Well, maybe if they ever had a decent paycheck they would...

Amen!

And, personally, I wouldn't even apply for a job that didn't pay in Takumars.

[TomK]

top reason they cite is lack of specific qualifications or experience.

and

must be able to lift 50lbs

Lack of qualification: "You don't qualify, you are over 50 yrs old."
Of course that is not actually said out loud.

[GeneV]

It is also people not moving to another location because they can't sell a home. There is a certain amount of unemployment where available people don't match the skill set of available jobs which is structural even in the best of times. The report says we need 21 million new jobs of this decade to keep unemployment at bay. I had trouble finding the 3million figure anywhere in the actual report (which, like their report on energy savings, is excellent). However, according to the report, there are about 7.2 million unemployed right now, so before we talk about how lazy everyone is, it would seem that 3 million jobs unfilled and a similar number looking would be about 3-4% unemployment, or what economists say is essentially full employment.

[mtansley]

I imagine it's the same problem that I'm finding here in Canada.

The people hiring generally come from university and therefore to them, if you don't have a university degree you're crap and can't possibly do the job.

Also, job hiring these days is based on checking boxes, if you aren't able to check all the boxes then you don't get hired.

I saw a position somewhere here in Canada recently for a photographer position that said that you MUST have experience with Canon equipment. What idiot wrote that? DSLRs are DSLRs. You want experience? Tell me I have a chance to get that job & I'll RENT a Canon for a week to get experience on it. Companies don't want to bother trying to hire people who have intelligence and can learn, they would prefer to complain that they can't hire the exact people they want.

That's the real problem. There is a lot of untapped intelligence and ability out there, unfortunately, the human resource departments don't have the ability or intelligence to harness it.

[Nesster]

In the case of the Canon requirement, there are special technologies that may be Canon proprietary and thus important. The flip side is that the company isn't considering any sort of training - they want someone who they can pretend is fully productive on day 1.

The McKinsey report talks about lack of mobility - now with people not being able to sell their homes, with two income families needing to replace both in the new location, etc.

The technologization of the recruitment process has made checking the right boxes more critical than ever - I know in my line of business the recruiters have very little understanding of what actually goes into a job - they rely on the job spec to match up skills to requirements. (And again - that mythical plug-n-play hire is the version of that funny Christmas Vacation skit that corporations play.)

There's some evidence that the longer you are unemployed the more 'damaged goods' you are to a prospective employer. They'd rather poach someone already working. This is the same fallacy that rewards past success in executive recruiting. In the case of someone already with a job, they figure the person must be good for the company not to have let them go already. With the past success - the idea there is that a 'failure' such as getting fired is often beyond one's control. A new boss may sweep the execs and bring in his own cronies... etc. The evidence of having once functioned at a certain level is the strongest evidence that you can do so again.

There's also distrust of someone long term unemployed. There's less willingness to give such a person the same benefit as the fired exec. And if they haven't yet found work after all this time, maybe there's something wrong with THEM, not the job market.

A couple of years ago I ran into a former hr person I know, and he said that companies now are looking at total cost of an employee when making layoff decisions. This means someone with lots of medical cost is more likely to be laid off... illegal I think, and discriminatory, but the rules that were followed even 15 years ago now seem to be skirted.

[jeffkrol]

http://www.mckinsey.com/mgi/publications/us_jobs/pdfs/MGI_us_jobs_full_report.pdf

See pg 3...........
and the pretty chart on pg 10

(their pages not pdf pages)

[mtansley]

All totally depressing information when you've been laid off for more than a year like I have been.

I wish I hadn't read this thread now. It may be U.S. based but much applies up here as well.

Basically, no one will give you a chance to prove yourself, they expect to fit round pegs directly into the exact size round holes.

[normhead]

My dad (Ph.d Urban Sociologiy ) used to say, you can train anyone for anything in two years. What these people are actually saying is, we want exactly what we want, and we aren't going to train anyone. We want someone where someone else has paid to train him and we can just hire him/her without taking any off the cost of training on ourselves.

The flip side is, the lack of employee loyalty (sometimes with good reason) means, you train someone for 6 months, absorb $10-15,000 in retraining costs, and they leave for a company that will pay them more because they don't have to repay retraining costs. It's a vicious circle. Companies that won't train because they've been burned by employees who leave early, employees who accept training but leave before they've earned the company who trained them any money. What's needed is a solid gov. program that covers costs, if an employee leaves before a specific contract is finished and forces companies who don't train new employees to pay those companies that do, for the employees they steal.

It's been that way for so long... I can't believe no one but me sees it. One of my bosses told me that in Europe, if an employee leaves before an apprenticeship period is up.. there's a court case. Over here, a lot of companies hire apprentices, keep them while they're cheap, as soon as the approach journeyman's pay levels they fire them and hire new cheap apprentices. The same happens in corporations with different terminology. That's a big deterrent to employees leaving, or companies hiring staff raw, and never bringing them up to acceptable levels of pay. The court determines who's at fault, and there are penalties for trying to abuse the system. Over here, it's the wild wild west, and both corporations and employees try to milk the system to their advantage, endlessly, and to both of their detriments. It's a lose / lose situation.

Another solution, have all companies pay into a retraining fund.. those companies who run retraining programs for people they don't currently employ could draw on the fund to defer costs of training. That way, at least a small business like the one I used to work in isn't out the total cost of retraining when a new employee leaves for a better paying job, just as he becomes productive in your workplace.

[jogiba]

Ask and ye shall receive.

I recently wrote an article right here on Staffing Talk called Why Are There 3 Million Unfilled Job Openings In America Right Now?

It struck quite a chord with some readers, and a nerve in others, with several asking for details on what those jobs are, and where they are.

As I wrote about in that story, there are several factors for these unfilled job vacancies.

Chief among them, according to many experts, is a misalignment between the skills and experience those jobs require, and the skills and experience of the labor pool.

With that quick summary, let’s move on now to what types of jobs are going unfilled.

“Middle-skill” workers – those with more than a high school diploma but less than a four-year degree – are currently in demand.

The state of New York for example projects it will have nearly a million job openings for these workers by the year 2018.

That’s according to a new study that also says the state will have to invest in some serious training and education to make sure those workers are ready.

Again, there’s that gap I wrote about last month but that some Staffing Talk readers took exception to.

About 46 percent of all current job openings in New York are classified as middle-skill, but only 39 percent of New York workers have the credentials to fill them (sorry but there’s the gap again).

Some of the middle-skill jobs expected to grow by 2018 include dental hygienists, with median annual earnings of $65,160; electricians, with median annual earnings of $61,430; and aircraft mechanics with median annual earnings of $56,900.

The HR Policy Association is comprised of the Chief Human Resource Officers at 300 of the largest companies doing business in America that collectively employ over 20 million people.

One of the CHROs contentions is that “the development of individuals with science, technology, engineering and math skills (STEM) has been badly neglected in the United States, creating national security issues and hobbling the economy.”

The HR execs specifically cite the defense industry, saying defense contractors anticipate tens of thousands of highly skilled engineers will retire in the next five years or so. And there aren’t enough candidates to replace them.

“Most job candidates will need to be U.S. citizens who can pass government security requirements, and there is nowhere near the number of students in the pipeline today to fill those jobs.”

It’s not all about college grads though. Millions of well-paid skilled trade and production employees will also have to be replaced, according to the human resources association members.

Manufacturing will need to find an estimated 143,000 welders, 415,000 assemblers, and 434,000 metal and plastic workers.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics says between the years 2008 and 2018 two million new construction workers will be needed, including 160,000 carpenters, 112,000 plumbers and 168,000 electricians.

So there are jobs. Now, where are they? Since I have already used up most of my space, I’ll leave you with this table from Indeed.com about the cities with the hottest hiring.

So What, And Where, Are These 3 Million Job Openings?

[Laurentiu Cristofor]

The call for STEM - Science, Tech, Engineering, Math - education in the McKinsey report is in the right direction.

It's not new though - The World is Flat has covered this topic some time ago. But it's hard to get youth interested in this stuff when TV and movies only show stories about characters that succeed through sheer will and passion. All we get are results of past actions.