{"id":"79e2dc80-804c-4110-9207-b61adfb6ca64","slug":"the-crisis-in-the-lack-of-skilled-workers-worldwide-its-meaning-for-healthcare-worldwide","title":"The Crisis in the lack of skilled workers worldwide: Its meaning for healthcare worldwide","authors":["Edward E. Gordon"],"abstract":"I have asked Ed Gordon who is an expert on the Workforce Issues worldwide to comment on his new book on this subject. The mismatch between the shortage of skilled workers and the demand for skilled workers worldwide will shape the development of countries across the globe. The basic reason is that the educational systems have failed to turn out educated young people who can read, write, communicate, and hold skilled positions and to produce students who can think independently. Future Jobs: Solving the Employment and Skills Crisis by Edward E. Gordon (Praeger, August 2013) focuses on the mismatch between the skills required in 21st-century workplaces and the current talent pool. The United States and the world are locked into a structural labor-market race between advanced technology on one side and demographics and education on the other. Today's and tomorrow's jobs require advanced technical skill levels. Workplaces may need fewer people, but they must be better educated and able to work with advanced computer systems. This has become the new normal for employment whether it is in an office, production facility, hospital, law firm, or service business. The demand for talent and the supply of workers with the desired skills are out of balance all over the world. The populations of Japan, South Korea, and many European nations are in decline. India and China are moving into more sophisticated high-tech manufacturing or IT services. They both are now encountering severe shortages of engineers, scientists, and technicians with the requisite educational preparation due to their deficient public-education systems and the inadequate standards of institutions of higher learning. In the United States, a significant generational transition is underway. The massive population bulge of baby-boomers have begun to retire and will largely exit the workforce by 2030. The National Bureau of Economic Research warns that the technical preparation of this generation was superior to that of the generations that follow. In 2013 over 90 million Americans of working age were not part of the U.S. labor market. The number of people looking for work (labor participation rate) was near the historic low of 63.3%; while the average duration of unemployment remained near historic highs. Yet over 6 million jobs were vacant across the United States, and surveys of employers consistently reported difficulty recruiting engineers, high-skilled technical positions, healthcare professionals, and management staff in biomedical and life sciences as well as sales representatives, accounting, and finance staff. Most of these vacant jobs are in in science, technology, engineering, and math-related (STEM) occupations.","thumbnailUrl":null,"publishDate":"2013-10-10T00:00:00.000Z","doi":"10.4103/2152-7806.119729","categories":["Original Article"],"fullTextUrl":"http://sni.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/3801/SNI-4-138.pdf"}