As the nation attempts to pull itself out of economic recession, leaders and policy makers alike are struggling to find ways to integrate the millions of unemployed back into the world of work. The longer these individuals go unemployed, the more likely it is that their current skill sets will continue to deteriorate. Along with this stark reality, educators and policymakers are also realizing that a substantial portion of today’s labor force does not possess the necessary skills for gainful employment.
The phrase most often used to describe this problem is “skills gap.” A skills gap is defined as a measurement of the difference between the skills needed for a job versus the skills actually possessed by a prospective worker. This recent report by ACT attempts to create a simpler definition of the term “skills gap,” and conducts a skills gap analysis looking at four major industries.
In order to quantify gaps at the national level researchers looked at four industries: manufacturing, healthcare, energy, and construction, which represent 25 percent of all U.S. total employment. Combinations of analyses looking at national staffing patterns, as well as long-term occupation outlooks were used to determine the skills needed for each of the four industries. Occupations in which at least 10 percent of the overall employment for that industry was represented were chosen as target occupations to analyze.
The results were somewhat surprising and indicate that level of education does not necessarily lead to gaps in on-the-job skills. Individuals with a higher level of education often saw significant skill gaps. For example, in the energy sector, 52 percent of individuals located in the lowest education group met or exceeded skill requirements for applied mathematics, compared to only 12 percent of those in the highest education group. This is telling in that it suggests that a higher level of education does not necessarily prepare individuals for the skills required in the workplace.
A Better Measure of Skills Gaps
ACT
August
2011
