This is ridiculous. The purpose of school is not to prepare kids for one particular career or path in life.

Let's take the high-tech industry for example.
They also have a chronic shortage of workers.
Got a diploma?
Great.
Now all you need is experience in operating an expensive-as-hell machine you MIGHT have seen once on a lab-tour and experience with a program you will never-ever tumble upon except if you already performed the kind of job you are applying for.

A former colleague of mine has a doctorate degree in chemistry. After getting his degree, he was looking for a job for almost a full year.




There is no shortage of skilled workers.
Not in any first-world country.
They are lying.
They are looking for a specialist who will do a high-end job for a beginner's payment.

My company's bread and butter is high-tech manufacturing and we don't have too much of a problem filling positions, because, well, we pay OK.

Keep in mind that these are technical and difficult manufacturing jobs. Typically we hire into the less technical positions and promote from within.

Entry level positions start at $19.50 and you can fairly quickly (within 3 years) be making $28.50 on average.

However, most of our employees have 15+ years of experience and the average hourly wage, including the entry level employees, is $38.50.

All of that is without overtime, which has been running at about 15 - 20% per year for the past 3 years or so, so add that in.

Now I understand that anyone making $28.50 per hour isn't rich, especially not in Northern NJ, but it's not too bad either if your highest level of education is a High School degree.

Point is, by paying OK, when positions open up it doesn't take me forever to fill them with highly qualified employees.

When I first started there, I had a fight with the PTB about our wage scale and managed to convince them that with employees, like everything else in life, you get what you pay for. You want great employees and an average 3 weeks to fill a position, pay well. You want to keep turnover low so you aren't constantly training new staff, pay well, provide decent benefits and vacation pay.

The PTB saw the light and it's paid off well for the company.

On the other hand, and in defense on the Austin company referenced, I'm not 100% sure we could find the qualified workforce so easily in another part of the country. There is a sort of "critical mass" of trained potential employees here and while wages (and taxes) are higher, the schools are pretty good and I can count on a High School graduate having the basic skills for an entry level job at our company. I lived in Texas and the schools were not as good as they are in NJ. Not being "regionalist", but it's a fact.

Then they cut the workforce while expecting their workers to produce more. Now, when an experienced worker leaves there are no workers that came in as entry level trainees to take their place so they need to hire employees that gained experience working at other companies (or in other countries).

There is no shortage of workers capable of learning the skills but there may well be a shortage of experienced workers in a skill. Couple that with the fact that companies want to pay less and less for these skills and yeah, you have a shortage of workers.

Time for these companies to take personal responsibility and start training their own workforce instead of expecting the public and individuals to pay for the training.