The 'Skills Gap' Myth

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#jobs #business #career

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There are eight point two MILLION job openings in America right now, and around seven million people actively looking for a job…

There are also millions of American who have simply given up on even trying to look for a job, but still companies are complaining that they can’t get the people they need…

There is one reason that has been used time and time again to explain this all. yep… the skills gap…

There are people looking for work, and jobs on offer… but the skills of those people and the requirements of the jobs just don’t line up…

It’s a simple elegant explanation to a major problem… but it’s also almost entirely made up…

The skills gap also known as the skills shortage, or just good old structural unemployment is a convenient excuse for a lot of the major issues in todays job market that are often swept under the rug by businesses, politicians, and even economic statistics.

If a hospital is hiring a doctor, but the only person in the town looking for a job has a degree in computer science then obviously that role is not going to be filled regardless of how much time and effort the applicant has put into their education.

The argument that you would have seen is that this same problem is playing out everywhere across the world which is why even if companies claim to be desperate to hire people, you may struggle to find a job…

The whole argument conveniently shifts the blame of any labor market problems onto the workers because they are the ones that haven’t trained the right skills or developed the right experience.

So it’s time to learn How Money Works to find out how the myth of the “skills gap” helps everyone… but you.

[josephs]

1. Post a job with extremely high requirements and low salary.
2. Reject anyone that doesn't cover 100%
3. Use an offshore recruiter to find an H1B candidate that's close enough on paper.
4. Offer them an even lower salary, which they will be glad to take anyway.
5. Since their visa is tied to their employment, you can exploit them and they can't leave.
6. Train them all you want, they can't leave anyway.
7. Profit, profit, profit.

[Silverghost]

Funny how the amount of skills you need is always increasing but the pay never increases.

[AprilFriday-devm]

I work in a supposed “shortage” field. Yeah, no. There are a lot of qualified potential employees who are staying home with their kids instead. Because we require a rigorous, full-time, 12 quarter masters degree as entry level, but jobs start at $42, 000. That’s not a worker shortage. It’s a realistic thinking shortage.

[KennTollens]

They will pay billions on ads, but nothing to train employees to make the products.

[rud]

The constant shortage of overqualified, underpaid workers.

[elbowstrike]

"nObOdY wAnTs tO wOrK aNyMoRe"
"I want to work. Are you taking on apprentices?"
"No."

[jileskorey]

These employers don't view applicants as investments to train, but expect pre-made, replaceable cogs to slot in a machine.

[huehuehue-]

“Can’t get the people they need” = I don’t want to pay a competitive or living wage for my workers. I expect servants to live on ramen with 5 roommates.

And they want the worker with 5+ years of experience to take a 20-30% pay cut to work at their trash company.

[carlthecaveman]

We've been shorthanded for years and my CEO said something about just not being able to find qualified people. I asked him what kind of space shuttle driver, former Air Force one pilot he thought was going to pack it out to the boonies to work for a quarter of the industry rate and after the initial offense passed he had a bunch of questions, gave the handful of us that have been carrying the company a huge raise, and miraculously some qualified people came out of the woodwork.

[robertpritchard]

Years ago my dad was an accountant and he had a client who owned a factory in China (or something like that), who was complaining that the workers in this factory were willing to quit and go work at the factory across the street for a raise of 10 yuan (or whatever) per hour, which, the client stressed, was a negligible amount; it was ridiculous to switch jobs over a raise so small. My dad said, "Another way of saying that is that you're willing to let them leave rather than pay them an extra 10 yuan per hour." And the client replies, "An extra 10 yuans per hour, that's a lot of money, we can't afford that!" (My own contribution, 20 years later: if someone tries to suggest that a minimal sum to the worker may become, multiplied by the number of workers, a significant expense to to the factory-owner, my dad could say, "You should ask the factory across the street how they're able to do it."

[SuzuNoUtaTX]

If they can’t find the skills, they should help build the skills, anything else is an excuse.

[MaddMason]

I graduated during the last recession with a STEM degree. Employers told me I didn’t have enough experience. I worked construction in the summer to pay for school and that looked bad on my resume because I didn’t have the right internships. I had to stay in the construction industry ever since while I tried for years to get an entry level job with my degree. After hundreds of job applications I got nothing. Stopped getting interviews after 1 year out of university. I eventually worked my way up from a ditch digger to running million dollar + construction projects and eventually started my own small construction business. I bet I couldn’t even get a $25, 000 per year job if I went to any other industry. These pantsuit women HR managers think skills are not transferable. The whole system is total bullshit. I don’t blame people for checking out.

[willpotter]

26$/hr in 1980, is $80/hr today. How bout they fix that first??

[Zermas]

I was once turned down for a job because I didn't have 5 years of experience with a product that had been available for about 6 months

[gyurmarajzfilm]

"There is not a skill shortage. There is just a shortage of people who want to do difficult work for bad pay" - sums up spot on.

[glubglubman]

Why can't find a enginner programmer that will develop my entire factory automated system for 5 dollars/hour? What a fucking mystery.

[jeffreynicol]

Companies just want employees with a Masters degree and 10years experience while paying them $10.25 an hour.

[AlexC-ejmk]

I have noticed a lot of companies don’t know what they are asking for. They will say they need IT but in actuality they need a web master, etc.

[WillMoon]

Back in "the day", companies used to take bright and smart people and, using some of their corporate profits pay for their college and training with a agreed upon term of employment so that they could have the employees they needed for a reasonable length of time. These days, companies funnel all of their money into stock buybacks and dividend payments to shareholders and then say they're constantly hiring so they look like their businesses are growing, which looks better to retail investors.

[Gamer]

Businesses: Demand more qualifications than the CEO, pay less than the janitor.
Also Businesses: We can't find anyone for our jobs!