The article "Despite Recession, High Demand for Skilled Labor" by Louis Uchitelle highlights the need for skilled labor despite the soaring unemployment rate. The unemployment rate has risen to 9.4 percent, the highest in 30 years (Uchitelle np). This increase is mainly due to a recession. Interestingly tough employers are looking for qualified workers even during the hard times according to the government's standard employment data. These jobs take years of experience to attain the required skills. For instance, it is tough to find an experienced person in welding. It takes a minimum of ten years to produce a perfect weld, and even then, only a few can manage to weld properly. Other employers are looking for include electrical lineman, critical care nurses, special education teachers and geotechnical engineers among others.
About six million jobs have disappeared in the last 30 years, yet there are numerous places employers need to fill in various technical fields. The problem according to Larry Johnson, is finding skilled workers with enough experience. These workers are difficult to find since most people seek to earn university degrees while avoiding vocational training. Most of these jobs do not require university qualification, but just high school education and some years of vocational and job training which most people are avoiding. Those already in these jobs are shifting from one job to another due to outsourcing and layoffs preventing them from honing these skills to perfection.
There is a looming labor shortage in the United States of America (USA) despite the rising unemployment rates. Conor Sen in the article “The Looming U.S. Labor Shortage” has highlighted two factors creating this scenario. These factors are baby boomers retirement and poor distribution of workers across the different industries in the economy.
According to the household survey in 2010, workers aged 45 years and above have increased from 49 to 63 million while those between the ages of 25 and 44 have decreased from 67 to 61 million. Social scientists call this phenomenon "pig moving through the python" (Sen np). The baby boomers are fast approaching the retirement age while those who are supposed to fill in the gaps are reducing in number. Social scientists ascribe this phenomenon to lower birth rates. The baby boomers have had fewer children as compared to their preceding generation. In addition to lower birth rates, the 2008 recession has also been a contributing factor in delaying millennials from jump-starting their careers. The baby boomers that are now approaching their 60s yet it is the category where the numbers of workers are still increasing. This growth will soon stop since the old people will begin becoming unproductive. It is important that the government begins training more young people to fill up the labor gap. It is not that there are not enough jobs, only that the available workers lack the skills required to fill up this positions.
Another reason for the looming labor gap is the unequal distribution of employment across the country and various industries. Most young workers are in technology companies like Google, Facebook, Apple, and others. This scenario is creating a deficit in government, education and healthcare sectors especially in rural areas where the majority of workers are those approaching the retirement age (Toossi 18). When these old people finally retire, these sectors will be left looking for non-available employees to fill these gaps.
Works Cited
Sen, Conor. ‘The Looming U.S Labor Shortage.’ MarketWatch. Retrieved from http://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-looming-us-labor-shortage-2012-03-14
Toossi, Mitra. ‘A Century of Change the U.S. Labor Force, 1950-2050. Monthly Labor Review. May, 2002.
Uchitelle, Louis. ‘Despite Recession, High Demand for Skilled Labor.’ The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/business/24jobs.html
