Attention students and job-seekers:
In a brutal job market, here's a task that might sound easy: Fill jobs in nursing, engineering and energy research that pay $55,000 to $60,000, plus benefits.Yet even with 15 million people hunting for work, even with the unemployment rate nearing 10 percent, some employers can't find enough qualified people for good-paying career jobs ...
Economists say the main problem is a mismatch between available work and people qualified to do it. Millions of jobs with attractive pay and benefits that once drew legions of workers to the auto industry, construction, Wall Street and other sectors are gone, probably for good. And those who lost those jobs generally lack the right experience for new positions popping up in health care, energy and engineering.
Many of these specialized jobs were hard to fill even before the recession. But during downturns, recruiters tend to become even choosier, less willing to take financial risks on untested workers.
(Read the rest here.)
This story highlights a gaping hole between America's education system and our economy: There is a fundamental disconnect between what high schools, colleges and universities and trade schools are turning out and the kind of workers our companies need.
This disconnect has gotten some attention in the last couple of years, and especially as the economy has foundered. Chambers of commerce and workforce development agencies are coordinating better with schools in their areas to communicate their needs, and schools are doing a better job of educating their students to meet those needs.
But there is a marketing piece that remains basically ignored: Students, even down to the 9th grade or so, need to hear about how conforming their interests to these businesses' needs can benefit them -- indeed, can ensure their long-term security and success. And here's another point: Not everyone has to go to college, assume massive amounts of debt and put in four or five years in a university setting to be successful and become an important cog in the economic wheel. Trade schools need to do a better job of communicating this to students who struggle in school.
The payoff won't only be a more complete workforce. It will also mean a lower dropout rate, because struggling students will be able to see a light at the end of what they consider to be an interminable, irrelevant tunnel.
Are you listening, state legislators? It all begins with you.
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