Skills Gap Myth Exposed. Big Business wants lower wages and fewer workers.

The skills gap excuse is an old one. Below, from The Progressive, is a look at a recent study that blows the lid off this ridiculous excuse by big business.

Very much related to this, check out my "Video History: Failed Republican Policy" tab, where I have many clips from CNN between 2004-05 explaining just how bogus the "skills gap" really is.

Corporate America has come up with a clever rationale for the plague of high unemployment. The problem is the “skills gap” between the requirements of modern technology and under-educated workers, they claim. This flimsy explanation for persistent unemployment and falling wages is thoroughly dynamited by Prof. Marc Levine’s recent study of the so-called “skills gap.” 

The “ skills-gap” salesmen tell us that we are faced with “structural unemployment” caused by the “mismatch” between the demands of modern technology and the inadequate skills of today’s workforce. Former Bucyrus International CEO Tim Sullivan issued the kind of explanation that we now hear across the nation: “We don’t have a jobs crisis in Milwaukee, we have an education crisis.” 

The blame-the-worker mentality lurking behind the “ skills gap” thesis was more explicitly laid out by PIMCO hedge fund owner Bill Gross, who declared, “Our labor force is too expensive and poorly educated for today’s marketplace.”

Some facts:

Fully 58% of all new jobs created since 2010 pay between $7.69 and $13.83 an hour.  
WAGES RISING TO ATTRACT SKILLED WORKERS? Wages Declining. 
MORE OVERTIME TO FILL THE GAP? Overtime declining. 
UNDER-SKILLED OR OVER-QUALIFIED? Over-qualified. 
FUTURE NEEDS: HIGHEST IN LOW-SKILL AREAS.