Record high U.S. job openings point to skills shortage

[Crabtownboy]

Americans need to get off their duffs, quit whining about immigrants and go to school, learn skills and trades. The jobs are there.

U.S. job openings surged to a record high in July, but a slightly slower pace of hiring suggested employers were having trouble finding qualified workers, a trend that could eventually boost wages.

Job openings, a measure of labor demand, increased 430,000 to a seasonally adjusted 5.8 million, the Labor Department said in its monthly Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey on Wednesday.

That was the highest level since the series started in December 2000 and pushed the jobs openings rate to 3.9 percent in July after holding steady at 3.6 percent for three straight months. Hiring, however, dipped to 5.0 million in July from 5.2 million the prior month. The hiring rate slipped to 3.5 percent from 3.7 percent in June.

"The data now signal unambiguously that the labor market is unable to supply the people companies need. Usually, that means wages will accelerate, though the evidence for that now is mixed," said Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics in New York.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/09/09/usa-economy-employment-idUSL1N11F18720150909

 

[Revmitchell]

No one is whining about immigrants. That term implies those who have entered the US legally. There is legitimate concern expressed about illegal and criminal immigrants.

However, we have to be at least curious as to why there is no incentive to be skilled in the areas providing jobs.

 

[Squire Robertsson]

I believe it goes to the denigration of blue collar careers. The reasons for this are many and varied:

• After WW2, blue collar parents wanted their children to have better careers than they had. So, they didn't want to have their children taking shop classes. They wanted them to prepare for college.
• The draft created a large pool of trained blue collar workers for at least two generations. Not every draftee was a trigger puller.
• It's taken a decade or so for folks to figure out which blue collar jobs are easily sent overseas and which ones are difficult if not impossible to do so.

SNIP
However, we have to be at least curious as to why there is no incentive to be skilled in the areas providing jobs.