If I were to tell you we’re at full employment, save one very nasty problem, you’d probably laugh. It sounds ridiculous on the face of it – aren’t people still struggling out there looking for work? Aren’t wages still stagnant?
The answer, not the punchline, lies in the problem – a terrible “skills gap”, or lack of the right skills for the jobs which are out there.
I’ve been slow to come around to the idea of a skills gap, figuring that it was far from our worst problem. There is a free market, after all, and workers who want a job will find a way to beef up their resumes to show that they have the skills which pay the bills. Eventually it should all even out. But what happens if the job market utterly fails? That appears to be the situation.
Barataria - The work of Erik Hare 