These days, when people get laid off, more often than not, it’s permanent. Workers who are laid off, fail to find a similar employment in the same city, or the same state, or anywhere else for that matter. The job sector didn’t just shrink temporarily; large chunks of it disappeared forever, as if surgically removed.
The U.S. Department of Labor details the widespread marketplace bloodletting: the nation’s unemployment rate skyrocketed to a near 30-year high of 10 percent last September. A main part of the reason for such dire marketplace news and the persistent struggle to recover, the Bloomberg News reported, is that we are confronted with something called the “structural unemployment problem.”
What is structural unemployment? Economist Jay Kaplan describes it as less-skilled, less-educated workers who are displaced from the job force and lack the ability to re-enter the marketplace. An example are the blue-collar workers of the Big Three — General Motors, Chrysler and Ford — who saw their plants screech to a permanent halt and now cannot find anything remotely comparable in position, much less in wages. Additionally, there are millions who are willing and able to work, but who are not needed in this new global economy. That is structural unemployment.
How do we avoid structural unemployment? Two words: education and training. Kaplan suggests it happens on two fronts. First, the Obama administration needs to ensure that its “citizens have the education and skills required in our global economy.”
Kaplan states that “The Administration needs to commit to a state-led national industrial policy that protects nascent sectors and provides ample opportunities for worker education and retraining,“ he says.
But there’s a small problem: For a nation with the vast size and population density of the United States, cranking this concept into gear and realizing its impact will take some time. “Even with the economy growing, it will take two perhaps three years for the unemployment rate to fall back down to 7 percent or lower. That’s likely to have serious political repercussions,” Kaplan says.
That’s where the second front comes in. Therefore it is prudent for the unemployed, underemployed and even the employed to take the initiative to procure continued or additional education and training in fields that will be in demand in the next few years and distant future. The Bureau of Labor Statistics forecasts the sectors that are in demand now, will also be in demand in the next 5–15 years, such as health care, nursing and IT.
Getting training and education in the fields that will be in demand will gird you as major portions of the economy continue to disintegrate.
–terry shropshire
