Posted on 10/06/2010 6:49:26 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
From the NY Times, White House Plans Job Training Partnership (bold by me):
As part of efforts to address record-high levels of long-term unemployment, President Obama plans to announce a new national public-private partnership on Monday to help retrain workers for jobs that are in demand.The White House has coined this program Skills for America's Future. The complication is, that lack of skills is not the problem for the 66% of the labor force aged 25 years and over without a bachelor's degree. The problem is the lack of jobs.
The national program is a response to frustrations from both workers and employers who complain that public retraining programs frequently do not provide students with employable skills. This new initiative is intended to help better align community college curriculums with the demands of local companies.
“The goal is to encourage community colleges and other training providers to work in close partnership with employers, to design a curriculum where they want to hire the people coming out of these programs right away,” said Austan Goolsbee, chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers.
The chart illustrates the dynamics of employment by level of education through August 2010, as measured by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Note that the data are indexed to the onset of the recession, December 2007, where 100 implies that employment is now at its pre-recession level.
The only category to recover employment in full is that requiring a Bachelor's degree or higher. Furthermore, no material change in employment for BA's (or higher) has occurred since about a year ago, as indexed employment hovers around 100. No new jobs.
The levels of employment for those workers with the lowest levels of educational attainment, 1. and 2., are 10.2% and 6.6% below pre-recession levels, respectively. That is over 3.5 million jobs.
The White House program is targeted at community college students, or education category 3., some college or associate degree in the chart above. Employment for workers with a community college degree sits over 3.2% below pre-recession levels, or 1.1 million jobs. Retraining workers will not raise the employment level further.
The government needs to "add jobs", not "retrain workers", and stimulate domestic aggregate demand.
Rebecca Wilder
This sort of Democrat thinking is what McMahon was getting at when she asked Blumenthal what he thought led to a job being created.
They will retrain workers for companies that don’t exist.
We need our jobs back from China and Mexico.
Many of those jobs didn’t require people to go to college. Sure they didn’t pay the best, but it’s certainly better than being on welfare, and at least something is being produced as a result(unlike with ‘McJobs’).
we are running out of Power and Mechanical engineers.
It can't!
An economy is like a jungle or a rainforest. It has a natural equilibrium and any external meddling only damages that balance.
The best way to help an economy is to get out of the way and that includes removing taxes and regulation.
If the U.S. had low corporate tax rates (lower than other countries) and low and easy to understand regulations, we would be flooded by foreign businesses and foreign capital looking for a tax haven.
As things stand now, a lot of wealthy Americans and U.S. corporations are thinking about moving elsewhere.
Apparently it hasn't worked, since these worker retraining programs have been around for twenty or more years. Americans were going to be retrained for the "high tech, high paying" jobs of the future. Well, the future is here.
It was reported that they will retrain all those un-needed cattle guards in Texas.
Lack of jobs not lack of skill....no sh!t Sherlock. That idiot Blumenthal is the poster boy for the mindset of our politicians and it just gets dumb & dumber.
The government cannot really create jobs without displacing private companies. The changes needed are not short term - they are mid- and long- term and involve (a) incentives and resources for entrepreneurs; (b) increased effective demand from US consumers for goods and services with a large US Labor component; (c) new technologies that produce real sustainable benefits like new baseload electric power generation that promises cheap reliable electric power that in turn will lead to the replacement of old import dependent gas powered autos.
Pardon me Rebecca, but the government cannot "add jobs." Fortunately, at least for now, that is for private employers to do.
IMHO, it would be best if the government just got the hell outta the way and let the market do what it does best. Wishful thinking, I know.
Well then, the solution is obvious: Grant every unemployed person at least a bachelor's degree. Has this been proposed yet at the Community College Summit?
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