Posted on 06/20/2011 5:19:51 AM PDT by markomalley
A mismatch in the US labour market between the skills of unemployed people and the jobs available is making it hard for some companies to find the right staff despite an unemployment rate of more than 9 percent, one of the country’s largest manufacturing employers has warned.
Eric Spiegel, chief executive in the US for Siemens, the German engineering group, said the problem exposed weaknesses in education and training in the US. Siemens had been forced to use more than 30 recruiters and hire staff from other companies to find the workers it needed for its expansion plans, even amid an unemployment rate of 9.1 percent
“There’s a mismatch between the jobs that are available, at least in our portfolio, and the people that we see out there,” Mr Spiegel told the Financial Times. “There is a shortage (of workers with the right skills.)”
He said Siemens was having to invest in education and training to meet its staffing needs, including apprenticeship programmes of the kind it uses in Germany.
His comments, made before Tim Geithner, the Treasury secretary, visits a Siemens plant in Ohio on Monday, suggest better education and training could help reduce the persistently high US unemployment rate.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnbc.com ...
Johnny can’t read, write or do math but he feels great about himself because he got several participation awards and his parents lawyer made sure he didn’t have to do any ‘difficult’ homework or cite the pledge of allegiance to the failed imperial American puppet masters....
That is what Free Trade™ will do for a country like ours. Ruin it.
BUT,BUT, we educated and have 65% of the worlds Lawyers!! with 4.6 % of the population!! We do not produce Kelly Johnson’s or Jonas Salk’s, we instead produce the worlds most worthless person, The Civil Rights lawyer,Couple this with Affirmative Action and it is a Wonder the electric is still on in this place.
Too many people want a job but they don't want to work, and they want to start at the top even though they don't have the slightest idea of what they are doing.
There is nothing new with this, I had the same problem running a crew back in the 70’s, it's just getting worse.
Get fired for not working, play the race card. If it's a union job, get fired and run to the union.
Same thing applies for people working their way up.
Someone gets skipped over for advancement because they are lazy, play the race card or run to the union.
And every time a new administration applies their own version for fixing the educational system it slips another notch or two ever lower down the ladder. Makes sense, if you're trying to destroy the system.
I’ve heard the same thing about them.
And PLCs? HAHAHAHA! That’s like selling a model T. We’re doing FF, PROFIBUS and HART and have been for a long time now. Awesome safety record.
Exactly and precisely and guess what, it has happened to America. Americans were sold a bill of goods and Americans bought it hook, line and sinker.
It won't be for long if the Lawyer in Chief and his EPA have anything to say about it.....and they do.
“40 years of destroying our own manufacturing base will have that effect.”
Amen brother. The USA needed PATRIOTS in Congress and White House and instead we have Free Traitors that purposely sold out the USA to make lucrative markets for Wall Street and former USA, but now trans national corporations with allegiance only to their CEO bonus and international shareholders.
When the biggest USA employer is now Wal-Mart the skills and money aren’t there.
The crux of the problem is that employers have bought the lie from the Edumacation establishment that in return for their tax dollars, perfectly trained little worker bees will emerge from the end of the pipeline and the employer won’t have to invest a second of their time or a dime of their money in training.
It does not work that way in the real world.
A cousin has a WW II collection of German stuff; helmets, uniforms, etc. Most of it is marked “Siemens.”
You assume that the manufacturing base was destroyed. Part of it was not destroyed, it was abandoned as uncompetitive. It was simply not required.
You assume that the world stands still and everything remains the same. The world of trade is dynamic, not static. Change is constant, the only constant.
The fact is the world did not stand still. The world entered the quest for better life and competed. Parts of American industry were bloated and over regulated and could not compete in the manufacture of many things. The work was lost to those who can make things at a lower price.
America still has a strong manufacturing base. That base is dependent on brains and skills and technology. The combination of those elements means that the labor required to produce is less than before. That change is called productivity increase. We make more with less labor.
Well Helmut, it seems then that German workers aren't up to snuff then either..Donit! (arrogant bastard)
Read the book, The Five Year Party, and you will see how one can spend many years in college and learn nothing.
Did this guy realize he runs a FOREIGN COMPANY?
My grandfather fought all through the Pacific, and until the day he died in 2002, he could not understand how anyone could drive a Mitsubishi, Toyota, Volkswagen or Mercedes. Not because he believed in only buying American, but because those companies all churned out war machines to kill Americans.
I guess it would be the same as my kids going and buying Al-Qaeda brand cars 10 years from now.
We're still the #1 producer in the world. What we don't have are labor intensive industries. That's simply because we are currently the world's leader in mechanization, automation, computerization, and robotics as those processes are realized in the installed base.
Even white collar workers have been left unemployed by computerization.
That is the absolute truth. As one who graduated from college some 22 years after graduating from high school, I can tell you that the mission of higher education isn't the same as it was a few decades earlier.
Diversity, global warming, saving the whales - it's all about the latest teaching fad. That's not to say that there is no value in college, but one could easily throw out 50% of the "fluff" and maintain the same level of actual education.
Of course, we skilled folks are usually taken. :)
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