Even When Jobs Return, Detroit’s Workers Fall Short On Skills

[Purveyor]

By Reuters
Friday, August 2, 2013 7:19 EDT
By Nick Carey

DETROIT (Reuters) – Detroit emergency manager Kevyn Orr has a long list of things to fix in the city and among them is one that may sound surprising: there are not enough skilled workers to fill job openings as they become available.

“Every problem in this city revolves around jobs,” said Lindsay Chalmers, vice president of non-profit Goodwill Industries of Greater Detroit. “That’s at the heart of the issue for Detroit.”

The decline of manufacturing jobs, above all in the automotive industry, has played a major role in the slide of the Motor City’s population to 700,000 from a peak of 1.8 million in the 1950s. Despite recent gains, Michigan has 350,000 fewer manufacturing jobs than in 2000.

Seismic shifts in the local labor market have left many unskilled workers behind.

“In the old days you could graduate on Friday, get hired at the Ford plant on Monday and they’d train you,” said Sheldon Danziger, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan. “But in Detroit as in other manufacturing cities, employers are demanding that workers come to jobs with more skills than they used to have.”

MORE...

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/08/02/even-when-jobs-return-detroits-workers-fall-short-on-skills/

[Scuba]

1. Republican response: Close more schools.

[Safetykitten]

2. "workers come to jobs with more skills"...subservience, total devotion, no questions, no requests,

no time off questions, no asking for raises. You know, those kind of skills.

[mick063]

3. Yes

Because we hate the unemployed. Chase them from state to state to follow the latest round of pot sweeteners in the State's competitive race to the bottom. Who has the lowest taxes and provides the most subsidies? The taxpayers buy into this, reducing government coffers to lure business and "jobs". It doesn't matter what type of jobs. Campaigning on job growth doesn't discriminate. Folks can work two jobs if they are "rugged individualists that can pull themselves up by their bootstraps".

The states which try to maintain some semblance of infrastructure are penalized. Not "keeping up with the Joneses".

So after a state has successfully punished the "unemployed", chased them away to other places, that state "sweetens the pot" to lure in business to remain competitive, and then moans about the lack of skilled workers to fill those jobs.

I propose that we just collectively join the migrant farmworkers union. They have the most experience with this.

[leftstreet]

5. +1

...and always, always, the workers are blamed

[Safetykitten]

6. I was wondering about that too. What are these insane skills that people must have?

[lumberjack_jeff]

8. I feel a desire to go all Samuel Jackson on any post bearing the words "not enough skilled workers".

[Populist_Prole]

9. They're STILL using this canard!!??

What, on like the 140 people nationwide that would buy that BS?

[HiPointDem]

10. this 'workers have no skills!' meme is crap. training workers didn't used to be a problem; in the

old days they'd bring in immigrants fresh off the boat who couldn't even speak english & train them. and contrary to popular belief, the jobs they trained them for weren't about turning one screw 10 hours a day.

similarly, half the jobs created last month were in retail. how much training is required to create a passable retail worker? if you can be polite & follow a routine, you can do it.

in china they're importing peasants from the hinterlands to work in modern factories.

this 'no skills' is crap. they're not asking for brain surgeons, they're talking about mostly low-wage jobs, jobs that start around $11-$14/hr.

[LWolf]

11. I'm thinking that

when they have finally completely privatized public education and turned teachers into low-paid babysitter/clerks, suddenly they'll "hear" the outcry against all the testing, and all of the tests and the "make every student ready to enter the university on graduation" will disappear, replaced by "training" for low-wage jobs.

[dembotoz]

12. heard this bs before and it always gets published

sounds like someone wants to shift a bunch of jobs to china