That’s according to a new report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Source: Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, “Better Skills, Better Jobs, Better Lives: A Strategic Approach to Skills Policies.” Note: Brazil data refers to urban areas only. Data for China refers to registered unemployment rate in rural areas in 2009; India’s data is for 2009/10; Indonesia’s for 2011, first quarter.Take a look at the blue bars in the chart above, which show the share of employers who report having difficulty recruiting adequately skilled workers. As you can see, among the countries assessed here, only Australia, Brazil, India and Japan had a greater share of employers who said they faced skill shortages.
It’s not clear what would be behind these employer frustrations. As shown in the green bars in that same chart, unemployment rates are high in many of these countries, including the United States. That should mean labor is abundantly available.
Perhaps well-matched workers and employers have trouble finding each other, although presumably in the digital age these search frictions should be relatively small. Maybe employers aren’t offering high enough wages to entice the workers they seek.
Most likely the biggest obstacle, though, is that it takes significant time and resources for displaced workers to gain skills and training to become the ideal job candidates that businesses seek.
The organization’s report covers some ways that public policy can accelerate this process, among them improving public investment in higher education. But American states — whose public colleges enroll about three-quarters of all students — has been increasingly shifting the cost burden of higher education away from the public and onto the students themselves.