11 Million Job Openings and 9 Million Jobless-What Gives? (Training May Help)

There is always a natural balance between job openings and jobless that includes a type of cushion that when wages rise additional workers may be willing to jump into the market. The article, "Job openings reach historic high of almost 11 million. Why are 9 million still jobless?" by Aimee Picchi helps us think about some of those issues. 

There are lots of different ideas and thoughts about it. Some is related to COVID concerns and some of it may be related to a desire not to work at the same level. It may also be that there is a mismatch between the types of jobs opening and the type of skills currently available in the market. 

Let us say for a moment you have high job openings but people don't have the background and right skills to engage in those jobs. That may mean higher levels of training skill and ability that helps to give people real opportunities to engage in the market are needed. No one wants to sweep floors if they can do something more meaningful (not that its not meaningful but some of those jobs might be better served by robotics to augment human labor. Its better to think of maximizing our labor to raise their value and productivity in addition to the help of normal supply and demand.)

Others may simply decide that COVID taught them about life and don't want to work because they have other sources of income (untaxed shadow market.) or have supportive partners, families or have other concerns. Others might feel they don't want to work in low wage jobs anymore but don't have the skills to move to higher paying jobs. 

This is where education and training can help. Specifically, online education can partner with companies to develop certificates and other "hands on" type trainings where classroom and work time are part of the same process (i.e. work 4 days and attend school 1 day. or other arrangement.) and then discuss what you learned about work that week as students apply concepts. 

Its just a thought. There are lots of reasons why people don't work. There always is some unemployed people but perhaps lower/removal of COVID benefits will help but so will training as well as putting people to work as self-employed could also be helpful. Point is...we need to think about tackling problems with multiple perspectives that provide a more holistic solution. 🤷