11
A
few months ago, Jamie Dimon, the chief
executive of JPMorgan Chase, and Marlene
Seltzer, the chief executive of Jobs for the
Future, published an article in Politico titled “Closing
the Skills Gap.” They began portentously: “Today,
nearly 11 million Americans are unemployed. Yet, at
the same time, 4 million jobs sit unfilled” — supposedly
demonstrating “the gulf between the skills job seekers
currently have and the skills employers need.”
Actually, in an ever-changing economy there are
always some positions unfilled even while some
workers are unemployed, and the current ratio
of vacancies to unemployed workers is far below
normal. Meanwhile, multiple careful studies have
found no support for claims that inadequate worker
skills explain high unemployment.
But the belief that America suffers from a severe “skills
gap” is one of those things that everyone important
knows must be true, because everyone they know
says it’s true. It’s a prime example of a zombie idea
— an idea that should have been killed by evidence,
but refuses to die.
And it does a lot of harm. Before we get there, however,
what do we actually know about skills and jobs?
Think about what we would expect to find if there
really were a skills shortage. Above all, we should
see workers with the right skills doing well, while only
those without those skills are doing badly. We don’t.
Yes, workers with a lot of formal education have lower
unemployment than those with less, but that’s always
true, in good times and bad. The crucial point is that
unemployment remains much higher among workers at
all education levels than it was before the financial crisis.
The same is true across occupations: workers in every
major category are doing worse than they were in 2007.
Some employers do complain that they’re finding it
hard to find workers with the skills they need. But
show us the money: If employers are really crying
out for certain skills, they should be willing to offer
higher wages to attract workers with those skills.
In reality, however, it’s very hard to find groups of
workers getting big wage increases, and the cases
you can find don’t fit the conventional wisdom at all.
It’s good, for example, that workers who know how
to operate a sewing machine are seeing significant
raises in wages, but I very much doubt that these are
the skills people who make a lot of noise about the
alleged gap have in mind.
And it’s not just the evidence on unemployment
and wages that refutes the skills-gap story.
Careful surveys of employers — like those recently
conducted by researchers at both M.I.T. and the
Boston Consulting Group — similarly find, as the
consulting group declared, that “worries of a skills
gap crisis are overblown.”
The one piece of evidence you might cite in favor
of the skills-gap story is the sharp rise in long-term
unemployment, which could be evidence that
many workers don’t have what employers want.
But it isn’t. At this point, we know a lot about the
long-term unemployed, and they’re pretty much
indistinguishable in skills from laid-off workers who
quickly find new jobs. So what’s their problem? It’s
the very fact of being out of work, which makes
employers unwilling even to look at their qualifications.
So how does the myth of a skills shortage not only
persist, but remain part of what “everyone knows”?
Well, there was a nice illustration of the process last
fall, when some news media reported that 92 percent
of top executives said that there was, indeed, a
skills gap. The basis for this claim? A telephone
survey in which executives were asked, “Which of
the following do you feel best describes the ‘gap’ in
the U.S. workforce skills gap?” followed by a list of
alternatives. Given the loaded question, it’s actually
amazing that 8 percent of the respondents were
willing to declare that there was no gap.
The point is that influential people move in circles in
which repeating the skills-gap story — or, better yet,
writing about skill gaps in media outlets like Politico
— is a badge of seriousness, an assertion of tribal
identity. And the zombie shambles on.
Unfortunately, the skills myth — like the myth
of a looming debt crisis — is having dire effects
on real-world policy. Instead of focusing on the
way disastrously wrongheaded fiscal policy and
inadequate action by the Federal Reserve have
crippled the economy and demanding action,
important people piously wring their hands about the
failings of American workers.
Moreover, by blaming workers for their own plight, the
skills myth shifts attention away from the spectacle
of soaring profits and bonuses even as employment
and wages stagnate. Of course, that may be another
reason corporate executives like the myth so much.
So we need to kill this zombie, if we can, and
stop making excuses for an economy that
punishes workers.
HR
Paul Krugman joined The New York
Times in 1999 as a columnist on the
Op-Ed Page and continues as professor
of Economics and International Affairs
at Princeton University.
From The New York Times, March 31 © 2014. The New York Times
Company. All rights reserved. Used by permission and protected by the
Copyright Laws of the United States. The printing, copying, redistribution,
or retransmission of this Content without express written permission is
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By Paul Krugman
Jobs and Skills and Zombies:
The Myth of the Skills Gap
