Joblessness and skills: blaming the victims

Bill Knight column for Thurs., Fri. or Sat., Oct. 11, 12 or 13


According to corporate-cozy politicians who repeat Big Business’s excuse for not hiring despite record profits, the country’s unemployment crisis is because workers no longer have marketable skills prospective employers want.

Such a justification is another “blame-the-victim” attack rather than a helpful suggestion for jobless Americans.

It’s not just Republicans. Moderate Bill Clinton at Democrats’ national convention in August said, “There are already more than three million jobs open and unfilled in America, mostly because the people who apply for them don’t yet have the required skills to do them.”

Hogwash. Despite U.S. unemployment dropping 0.3% in September, to 7.8% (the largest one-month improvement in four years), the non-profit, non-partisan Economic Policy Institute (EPI) says the nagging problem of long-term joblessness is opportunity, not talent.

“The main cause of today’s persistent high unemployment is a broad-based lack of demand for workers – and not, as is often claimed, available workers lacking the skills needed for the sectors with job openings,” said Elise Gould of EPI.

Nevertheless, corporations whine about a “shortage” of applicants, ignoring the many discarded workers – many with high skills. The complaints are more of a pretext for increased off-shoring U.S. jobs and the importation of foreign workers to be exploited at low pay than a cry for specialized training, whether high-tech or vocational.

That was illustrated this summer when a man who’d earned a Masters degree decided to gauge the prospects for someone like him.

Eric Auld, a 26-year-old English teacher working as a temporary “adjunct” – a low-paid university position with no health benefits increasingly common at U.S. colleges, unfortunately – conducted a personal experiment using Craigslist. Auld composed an ad for a fictitious administrative assistant job in New York, a full-time position paying $12-to-$14 an hour with health insurance, and he didn’t ask for details on applicants’ experience or education.

“I published the ad at exactly 2:41 p.m. on Thursday,” he said. “The first response came in at 2:45 – just four minutes later. Ten minutes later, there were 10 responses. Twenty minutes later, there were 56. An hour later: 164. Six hours: 431.

“At 2:41 p.m. on Friday – exactly 24 hours after I posted the ad – there were 653 responses,” he continued.

Qualifications from job-seekers for what essentially was a decent clerical position might shock honest politicians, if not their Big Business buddies.

“Sixty-six percent of applicants held one or more degrees/certificates in higher education,” Auld said, adding a chilling conclusion: “No matter how much you want this job, there are 652 other people who want it, too.”

Besides the many people needing and seeking jobs, corporations have increasingly retreated from their in-house programs, while complaining about public schools.

“Training programs have been eliminated by major corporations,” according to Professor Emeritus Frank Emspak of the University of Wisconsin, speaking to Roger Bybee, an In These Times magazine contributor. “Apprenticeships are being abolished.”

Meanwhile, advantages are fading for getting advanced skills (think information technology or even engineering, both of which are being outsourced), and the risks of a technical education to acquire skills (like welding or a building trade) are falling because of wage cuts, union-busting and a slow economic recovery.

“You cannot de-link skills from the system needed to produce skilled workers and to sustain them,” Emspak added. “You can’t separate the issue of skills from employment security.”

EPI’s report notes, “For more than two out of three unemployed workers, there simply are no jobs.”

EPI also shows that there are about 4 applicants for every opening in Wholesale and Retail Trade, 4.5 applicants for every vacancy in Manufacturing, and 13 applicants for every opportunity in Construction.

“The solution, at least in the short term, is stimulus,” writes Ezra Klein in the Washington Post. “The government steps in and buys things, or hands out tax cuts so consumers and businesses can buy things, or somehow helps consumers get out from under their housing debt. Once that happens and the economy is humming along, government backs off and pays down its own debts.

“The unemployment problem is the kind [politicians] could solve, or at least ameliorate, right now,” Klein continued. “The Obama administration even has a pretty good plan to do so: the American Jobs Act, which includes an expanded payroll tax cut, more infrastructure investment, better jobless insurance, a tax cut for firms that hire new workers, aid to state and local governments, and a program to rebuild schools and foreclosed properties. The law would cost around $450 billion, which the Obama administration proposes to pay for by closing tax breaks for richer Americans. Independent economists estimate it would create around two million jobs over the next two years.

“And note that passing more stimulus doesn’t mean you can’t try and upgrade the skills of your labor force, too,” he added.

EPI’s report is online at www.epi.org/publication/job-seekers-odds-improve-remain-slim/