http://www.cbsnews.com/news/three-million-open-jobs-in-us-but-whos-qualified/
Millions of jobs are waiting to be filled, but employers say they can’t find qualified workers because of “the skills gap”
The following script is from “Three Million Open Jobs” which aired on November 11, 2012. Byron Pitts is the correspondent. David Schneider, producer.
The balance of power in Washington didn’t change this week as President Obama and most members of Congress kept their jobs. They’ll go back to work and face an unemployment problem that also hasn’t changed very much. Every month since January 2009, more than 20 million Americans have been either out of work or underemployed. Yet despite that staggering number, there are more than three million job openings in the U.S. Just in manufacturing, there are as many as 500,000 jobs that aren’t being filled because employers say they can’t find qualified workers.
It’s called “the skills gap.” How could that be, we wondered, at a time like this with so many people out of work? No place is the question more pressing than in Nevada. The state with the highest unemployment rate in the country. A place where there are jobs waiting to be filled.
Karl Hutter: Yeah, we hear way too much about the United States manufacturing, we don’t manufacture anything anymore. Not true. Not true.
Byron Pitts: Sure, it’s Mexico, it’s in China–
Karl Hutter: Yeah, yeah, that all went to China, that all went to Mexico. Not true, whatsoever.
Karl Hutter is the new chief operating officer of Click Bond in Carson City, Nev., a company his parents started in 1969.
Karl Hutter: We’re still technically a small business, but we’re growing quickly.
Byron Pitts: So, you’re hiring?
Karl Hutter: We are hiring. We’re hiring and we need to find good people. And that’s really what the challenge is these days.
Three hundred and twenty-five people work at Click Bond, making fasteners that hold cables, panels and pretty much everything else inside today’s planes, ships and trains. Their customers include the Defense Department. The F-35 has 30,000 Click Bond fasteners.
The workhorses in this factory may look old, but they’re computer controlled machines that make precision parts, accurate to a thousandth of an inch; the thickness of a piece of paper. Click Bond needs employees who can program the computers, operate the machines, fix them and then check to make sure the results are up to spec.
Ryan Costella: If you look at the real significant human achievements in this country a lot of them have to do with manufacturing or making something.
Ryan Costella is head of Strategic Initiatives at Click Bond. That’s another way of saying he’s looking ahead to both opportunities and problems facing the company.
Byron Pitts: Sure. So the skill gap, is it across the board? Is it at all levels? Or is it the entry level?
Ryan Costella: I would honestly say it’s probably an entry level problem. It’s those basic skill sets. Show up on time, you know, read, write, do math, problem solve. I can’t tell you how many people even coming out of higher ed with degrees who can’t put a sentence together without a major grammatical error. It’s a problem. If you can’t do the resume properly to get the job, you can’t come work for us. We’re in the business of making fasteners that hold systems together that protect people in the air when they’re flying. We’re in the business of perfection. .
Costella says Click Bond ran into trouble when it expanded production and went to buy these machines from a factory in Watertown, Conn. The company didn’t have enough skilled labor back home in Nevada to run them, so it bought the entire factory just to get the qualified employees and kept the plant running in Connecticut.
[Conn. worker: You just have to be careful that you don’t hit the side.]
Nationwide, manufacturers say the lack of skilled workers is the reason for hundreds of thousands of unfilled jobs; a number Ryan Costella says is about to get bigger.
Ryan Costella: You have a massive wave of baby boomers who are leaving the workforce very soon.
This is an excellent 60 Minutes report that is a MUST VIEW! Essentially, it is about our future and the necessity to train people to work with machines as teams to compete globally. Technology will constantly advance and threaten non-skilled jobs. What should be addressed, but is not, is the extent to which technology has already replaced labor workers. In the video there is an extensive amount of productive capital assets operating as “factories” using advanced, technological sophisticated machines that require skilled labor to program and operate. This is a challenge for education. But the reality is that technology engineers and scientists are constantly working on even more sophisticated machines and robots that require less and less human labor, but higher skills for those that are necessary to operate and maintain the machines. Our scientists, engineers, and executive managers who are not owners of their companies themselves, except for those in the highest employed positions, are encouraged to work to destroy employment by making the capital “worker” owner more productive. How much employment can be destroyed by substituting machines for people is a measure of their success––always focused on producing at the lowest cost. Only the people who already own productive capital are the beneficiaries of their work, as they systematically concentrate more and more capital ownership in their stationary 1 percent ranks.
In a competitive global world, the competitive cost of production is critical to business success. Full employment is not an objective of businesses, nor are businesses well equipped to be educators. Companies strive to keep labor input and other costs (using machines, robotics, digital computerized operations, etc.) at a minimum in order to maximize profits for the owners. Private sector job creation in numbers that match the pool of people willing and able to work is constantly being eroded by physical productive capital’s ever increasing role. Over the past century there has been an ever-accelerating shift to productive capital––which reflects tectonic shifts in the technologies of production.
Except for a relative few, the majority of the population, no matter how well educated, will not be able to find a job that pays sufficient wages or salaries to support a family or prevent a lifestyle, which is gradually being crippled by near poverty or poverty earnings. Thus, education is not the panacea, though it is critical for our future societal development. And younger, as well as older people, will increasingly find it harder and harder to secure a well-paying job––for most, their ONLY source of income––and will find themselves dependent on taxpayer-supported government welfare, open and disguised or concealed.
For solutions see “Financing Economic Growth With ‘FUTURE SAVINGS’: Solutions To Protect America From Economic Decline” at NationOfChange.org http://www.nationofchange.org/financing-future-economic-growth-future-savings-solutions-protect-america-economic-decline-137450624 and “Education Is Critical To Our Future Societal Development” at http://www.nationofchange.org/education-critical-our-future-societal-development-1373556479.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/three-million-open-jobs-in-us-but-whos-qualified/
