The labor participation rate fell to 66.3 percent it’s lowest level in 34 years in March. What recovery?
Even the Huffington Post has figured out that we have a structural unemployment problem:
“With more than 3 million open and available jobs on the career website CareerBliss.com alone, why do we keep seeing the labor participation rate dropping?
The answer is that employers can’t find the right workers. Too many unemployed American workers lack the relevant skills needed to fill the millions of jobs available.” -Heidi Golledge
That sure doesn’t sound like ‘cyclical unemployment’ to me.
Here’s more from HuffPost: “If you look at the current employment numbers there is a quality job out there for just about every graduate — if only they would have been guided toward courses of study that would give them the skills most in demand. We can start to bridge the skills gap now by guiding future workers toward growing and emerging industries.”
Sounds like the definition of structural unemployment to me: “Structural unemployment is a form of unemployment which occurs when the number of vacancies is equal to, or greater than, the number of the unemployed. The unemployed workers may lack the skills needed for the jobs, or they may not live in the part of the country or world where the jobs are available.“
We have been talking about this issue for some time- here, here, here, here are some of our most recent ones.
For a great (but ominous) discussion of just how bad this is, read The Market Ticker’s post: “The Chart That Will Crash The Market.
It is about this Labor Participation Rate chart posted above.
We need to give people skills so that they can be hired. Our industry is hiring. Info about skills and careers can be found here. Need training? Check out PMPA’s Comprehensive Training Database.