Structural Unemployment

Structural Unemployment
The unemployment has being a big issue for United States since the big recession started in 2008. According to the United States Department of labor the unemployment rate is 8.2 percent for may 2012, in others words, around 14.000 million of people in USA are unemployed; however, and spite of the great necessity of unemployment people for finding a job there are approximately 3.500 million of open jobs that cannot be fill because of the mismatch of labor force’s skills and the job’s requirements. This mismatch is called structural unemployment by economists, and is characterized for the difficulty of business to fill vacant jobs, the lack of work force skills and changes in demography and complex of the job market demand.
American businesses are facing a paradox — high unemployment and the inability to fill key jobs in their organizations. Most of the jobs available are related to internet technology, engineers, and manufactures. Despite of the high rate of unemployment, technology related business find difficult to fill vacancies. For instance, Technology giant Siemens Corp., the U.S. arm of Germany 's Siemens AG (SI.N), has over 3,000 jobs open all over the country. Moreover, engineer’s industries are also suffering for this shortage in talent; according to the seventh annual talent shortage survey from staffing firm ManpowerGroup is the second job most difficult to fill because of the deficit of knowledge and experience of applicants. Additionally, manufacturing as well is hurt by a dearth of skilled workers. According to the Labor Department 's latest Job Openings and Labor Turnover survey, there are 264,000 open jobs in manufacturing in May 2012, may be due to the rising wages in china that forced companies to bring production back to USA, and also because manufacture work is not attractive for the young labor force.
This big gap in skills has been driving by failures of American education. There are three clear factors: American colleges are producing fewer math and science graduates, students prefer social sciences careers, and finally, few vocational and training programs available. Colleges are producing fewer math and science graduates. In fact just 15 percent of current undergraduate students are pursuing a degree in those fields compared with China 40 percent and India 50 percent. Nevertheless, part of this problem is that students favor social sciences instead of math and sciences. For example, math, engineering, technology and computer science students accounted for about 11.1 percent of college graduates in 1980 that share dropped to about 8.9 percent in 2009. Finally, American students lack vocational skills that would help them in obtaining jobs that do not require a college degree, but vocational training is facing deep financial cuts by the government; besides, Obama’s administration has proposed a 20 percent reduction in its fiscal 2012 budget for career and technical education.
Another factor that is challenging for the structure of the unemployment now days is the change in demography and complex of the market demand of jobs. For instance, the soon retirement of baby boomers, the retirement of the veterans, and also the changes in manufactures are affecting the job market. As the baby boomers retire, there are fewer skilled workers available to replace them, and as a result there are thousands of open jobs. Some of this job not require highly skills such as machinists, operators, craft workers, distributors, and technicians, and are relatively well paying. On the other hand, a large group of military personnel returning home are facing big problems trying to find a job despite that this work force is very talented and highly trained. In fact, unemployment rate for veterans aged 20-24 averaged 30% in 2011. Equally important are the changes that manufacture industries have been implementing trying to redesign lines of production. Consequently this rapidly adoptions of new technologies and process make difficult for employees to adapt to changing needs.
Although is clear that the actual unemployment rate is mainly based on cyclical unemployment generated by recession, there is also a part of structural unemployment intrinsic in the high rate. This interesting phenomenon is a paradox for the economy that while the unemployment rate is reaching 8.2 percent; there are available around 3.500 million of open jobs waiting for the right people to fill them. As had been stated before most of these vacancies can be taking because the mismatch between skilled people and the nature of jobs. This issue generate difficult for business to recruit the right labor force and also has become a barrier for unemployment people in order to get a job. Furthermore, the dynamic in demography of the work force and changes in industries are also a determinant factor for the complex of the demand job market. As a result, the economy is losing money because of this relatively well paying jobs are now in the air. The situation is a really shame since if those vacancy jobs would be filled the unemployment rate would be drop approximately to 7.0 percent and those wages would inject 100.000 millions of dollars to the economy.
Works Cited
• Industries Glance: Manufacture http://www.bls.gov/iag/tgs/iag31-33.htm
• 2011 skills Gap Report http://www.themanufacturinginstitute.org/Research/Skills-Gap-in-Manufacturing/2011-Skills-Gap-Report/2011-Skills-Gap-Report.aspx
• U.S. Manufacturers Say There Aren 't Enough Skilled Workers To Fill Job Openingshttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/12/us-manufacturers-skilled-workers-job-openings_n_1007902.html

Cited: • Industries Glance: Manufacture http://www.bls.gov/iag/tgs/iag31-33.htm • 2011 skills Gap Report http://www.themanufacturinginstitute.org/Research/Skills-Gap-in-Manufacturing/2011-Skills-Gap-Report/2011-Skills-Gap-Report.aspx • U.S. Manufacturers Say There Aren 't Enough Skilled Workers To Fill Job Openingshttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/12/us-manufacturers-skilled-workers-job-openings_n_1007902.html