Search the site
October 06, 2011
Stay Connected: LinkedIn Twitter

Home » workforce

Attention Washington: Please address the skills crisis, too

In his address to a joint session of Congress last week, President Obama said, “Tonight we meet at an urgent time for our country.  We continue to face an economic crisis that has left millions of our neighbors jobless, and a political crisis that’s made things worse.”Indeed, the evidence abounds.

In recent days, the Labor Department reported that the economy created virtually no net jobs in August—its poorest monthly showing in a year. Unemployment remained stuck at 9.1 percent. The president’s own budget office, in its midyear review, forecast that the jobless rate will persist at 9 percent into next year as well. And just today, the U.S. Census Bureau announced that the national poverty rate had hit 15.1 percent last year while median household income declined. The 46 million Americans living below the poverty line last year represented the largest number in the 52 years for which poverty estimates have been published.

Sparking an economic revival in America and creating new jobs has no higher national priority. Yet as a business membership organization representing companies that employ millions of Americans, Corporate Voices for Working Families grapples with a related and urgent imperative: A widespread skills gap, which leaves many employers struggling to fill job openings even as millions of Americans search for work.
Read More...
Copyright © 2006-2010 CRO Corp, LLC. All rights reserved.