Economic policy reports, blog postings, and media stories of interest:
Writing in the online edition of The New York Times, Peter Cappelli of the University of Pennsylvania argues that “if there’s a gap, blame it on the employer.”
In the midst of the greatest surplus of talent in modern times, many employers nevertheless say that they cannot find people to hire. For every anecdote about employers who cannot find good candidates, though, there are a dozen stories of highly qualified candidates struggling even to be seen by employers.
…
Surveys of actual hiring managers have shown for decades that they are not complaining about academic skills among applicants. Few are interested in hiring recent graduates because they do not want to train them. The candidates they want are already employed, doing the job in question someplace else. What is in short supply is work experience specific to the immediate job, and no one wants to give anyone that experience, a Catch-22.
From the Economic Policy Institute’s analysis of the May version of the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) …
The May Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS), released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, provides evidence that the recovery continues to stagnate. While job openings in May increased by 195,000, unemployment in May increased by 220,000 …. This means that the “job-seekers ratio”—the ratio of unemployed workers to job openings—fell slightly (by one-tenth), to 3.5-to-1.
…
The ratio has been slowly but steadily improving since reaching its peak of 6.7-to-1 in summer 2009. However, the odds are still stacked strongly against job seekers; a job-seekers ratio above 3-to-1 means that for more than two out of three unemployed workers, there simply are no jobs.
Economic policy reports, blog postings, and media stories of interest:
A new report from the NC Budget and Tax Center analyzes the final state budget for fiscal year 2012-2013 recently enacted by the NC General Assembly — a budget that “takes no significant actions to address the state’s growing structural budget deficit.” From the report:
Although the final budget increases spending by 1.2 percent over the continuation budget, when compared to state spending before the Great Recession it reflects a tremendously diminished baseline budget – one that has resulted in fewer teachers in classrooms, aging and out-of-date textbooks, skyrocketing tuition rates for students at public colleges and universities, higher costs for accessing the courts, and widespread disrepair in the state’s transportation infrastructure.
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… From an overall fiscal standpoint, the final budget continues in the same direction as the one set in the 2011 legislative session. As such, it will continue to significantly underfund the education, well-being, and safety of all North Carolinians.
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