Skills Don't Pay the Bills

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/25/magazine/skills-dont-pay-the-bills.html?pagewanted=all

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"Bottom line thinking makes it possible for you to measure outcomes more quickly and easily." (John C. Maxwell)
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Adam Davidson's "Deep Thoughts This Week:"

1. There is no skills gap.
2. Who wants to operate a highly sophisticated machine for $10 an hour?
3. Not a lot of people.
4. As a result, there is going to be a skills gap.

Nearly 6 million factory jobs, almost a third of the entire manufacturing industry, have disappeared since 2000. And, while many of these jobs were lost to competition with low-wage countries, even more vanished because of computer-driven machinery that can do the work of 10, or in some cases, 100 workers. Those jobs are not coming back, but many believe that the industry's future (and, to some extent, the future of the American economy) lies in training a new generation for highly skilled manufacturing jobs -- the ones that require people who know how to run the computer that runs the machine.

According to Adam Davidson, the secret behind the skills gap is that there is not a skills gap at all. In a recent study by the Boston Consulting Group: "...outside of a few small cities that rely on the oil industry, there weren't many places where manufacturing wages were going up and employers still couldn't find enough workers. Trying to hire high-skilled workers at rock-bottom rates is not a skills gap." (starting pay at a metal fabricating manufacturer: $10 per hour; starting pay as a shift manager at McDonald's: $14 per hour.). "Many skilled workers have simply chosen to apply their skills elsewhere rather than work for less, and few young people choose to invest in training for jobs that pay fast food wages."

So, manufacturers, who face increasing competition from low-wage countries, feel they can't afford to pay higher wages. Potential workers choose more promising career paths. According to Howard Wial, an economist at the Brookings Institution who specializes in manufacturing employment: "It's individually rational. But it's not socially optimal."

If that isn't bad enough, it's hard to train people who are willing to learn these manufacturing skills (even at low pay rates) when they graduate from high school without the basic skills in math and science that these companies need to compete.

So: "The so-called skills gap is really a gap in education, and that effects all of us." (Adam Davidson)