Skills gap hobbles US employers
This is where on of Gingrichs ideas has a great deal of merit.
It is fundamentally wrong to give people money for 99 weeks for doing nothing. That's why we undertook and passed welfare reform when I was Speaker.
It is also why I will introduce a training requirement for extended federal unemployment benefits. We can better help these Americans by requiring them to participate in real training programs in private companies, in exchange for temporary unemployment aid.
Our goal is to convert the time and money now lost to a maintenance unemployment program into a human capital investment program that increases the competitiveness of the American worker in the world market in a time of dramatic scientific and technological change.
This makes sense. How many people have been out of work for years, just waiting for that perfect job? Skilled workers are needed now! The salaries are great and we dont have the workers! Retrain, or better yet, train!
Skills gap hobbles US employers - FT.comThe president of Marlin Steel Wire Products, a company in Baltimore with 30 employees, Mr Greenblatt says his inability to find qualified workers is hampering his businesss growth. If I could fill those positions, I could raise our annual revenues from $5m to $7m, he says.
He is offering a salary of more than $80,000 with overtime, including health and pension benefits. Yet in spite of extensive advertising, he has had no qualified applicants. He is trying to train some of his unskilled staff but says none has the ability or drive to complete the training.
The idea there is something structurally wrong with the US workforce is controversial among economists but has a certain resonance with the public. Since the emergence of Japan as a technology and manufacturing powerhouse in the 1970s, Americans have been anxious that they were losing their competitive edge to better-educated, harder-working rivals.
This is where on of Gingrichs ideas has a great deal of merit.
It is fundamentally wrong to give people money for 99 weeks for doing nothing. That's why we undertook and passed welfare reform when I was Speaker.
It is also why I will introduce a training requirement for extended federal unemployment benefits. We can better help these Americans by requiring them to participate in real training programs in private companies, in exchange for temporary unemployment aid.
Our goal is to convert the time and money now lost to a maintenance unemployment program into a human capital investment program that increases the competitiveness of the American worker in the world market in a time of dramatic scientific and technological change.
This makes sense. How many people have been out of work for years, just waiting for that perfect job? Skilled workers are needed now! The salaries are great and we dont have the workers! Retrain, or better yet, train!