Our Real Employment Challenge

Our Real Employment Challenge

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/09/our-real-employment-challenge/262045/ 

by Lenny T. Mendonca

Think the problem is, there just aren't enough jobs? Think again.

At a career fair in New York this past April, the line to get in stretched around the block. (Reuters)

How can the United States put more people back to work? The simple answer is to generate higher growth than we have seen so far in this recovery -- in the final analysis, only higher demand will convince employers to hire.
But even if GDP growth were more robust, the United States would still face an employment challenge -- one that all advanced economies face. Demand for high-skilled workers (those with college degrees or more education) is accelerating, while demand for low- and middle-skilled workers is falling. This is the result of technology and business-process improvements, which have automated or eliminated whole categories of low-skill jobs, while creating new careers for high-skilled workers. So, even as millions of low- and middle-skilled Americans have joined the long-term unemployed, employers say they are having increasing difficulty filling high-skilled jobs, particularly those that require technical expertise.

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These trends point to a grim situation: There are too few workers with the skills to drive growth in a 21st-century knowledge economy, and swelling ranks of workers whose skills will not be in demand and who could therefore face long spells of unemployment and underemployment. For the long-term health of the US economy, employers and policy makers need to head off both forms of labor market imbalance.