Posts about Unemployment

There is a real debate about the effectiveness of public investment in job training. The debate generally proceeds as follows.

Training Doesn't Work: The millions that have been spent on training in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, as was shown by the Labor Department and the NY Times, have demonstrated zero results. It makes us feel better, but the data shows that recipients of publicly subsidized training end up pretty much like they did before the training.

Training Works: This criticism is true in general. Many, perhaps most, training programs have been poorly executed. But studies, such as a recent study from Public/Private Ventures, have shown that training programs that target high-demand jobs in a city's growth sectors do work.

Training Doesn't Work: Not if the jobs simply aren't there. Training doesn't create jobs.

Training Works: No, but training does close the mismatch between the skills required by high-demand jobs and the skills of the unemployed. And employers in high-growth fields report that they are having trouble filling lots of positions due to precisely this mismatch.

Furthermore, if we can create a workforce whose skills do match the needs of high-growth fields, employers will be attracted to DC and will create more jobs. So, training can create jobs in the long term if it targets high-demand jobs that employers have difficultly filling.

Training Doesn't Work: This sounds great. But the mismatch between the skills of most unemployed and the needs of the labor market, particularly in DC, is sadly too great for training to bridge.

More than 40% of jobs in DC require a college degree, while nationally only 20-22% of jobs require a college degree. Yet 36% of DC residents are functionally illiterate.

Approximately 18,000 TANF recipients have less than a high school credential and almost 50% are reading below 7th grade. What training does Councilmember Barry expect will match these 18,000 TANF recipients with the jobs that exist in DC?

What do you think? Can job training work? Is the skills mismatch sadly too great to bridge? What implications do these considerations have for Gray's job training plans?

Gray's Jobs Summit, which will be chaired by Barbara Lang, president of the D.C. Chamber of Commerce, and Josyln Williams, head of the Metropolitan Council of the AFL-CIO, should address these difficult questions head on.

When people say DC is weathering the economic recession better than most places, it is clearly not the case for everyone. What they may have in mind is the fact that DC as a city is not losing jobs the way other places are. Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show employment in DC has been flat over the past year. That's good news, actually. Nearly every other state has seen big drops.

But the flat employment doesn't mean some areas have not shed jobs over the year. In fact, DC's construction industry lost 7,000 jobs in the last year. Trade, transportation and utilities, manufacturing, and professional and business services also had large losses. Only two industries had net gains: education and health services (200), and the government, including federal and DC (5,400).

What do these numbers tell us? While the District appears to be holding on to its jobs, thousands of DC residents are losing theirs. And even though jobs are being added to the market, it does not seem that they are going to unemployed DC residents. This suggests that the skills of unemployed DC residents may not be matching the skills required by the industries that are adding jobs.

The District could help reverse the skyrocketing trend in unemployment by really focusing on improving its workforce development programs. This could help get DC residents into the jobs that are available now, and those that will become available as the economy recovers.