Re:Decline in the labor share of income in the U.S.
by saalweachter on Friday October 23, 2015 @02:31PM
(#10440430)
> People with 1990 skills now are not employable today in many/most fields.
There has been a shift in the US from businesses providing training for workers to the expectation that workers will train themselves in advance of seeking employment.
I suspect this is the most untenable modern development in the US going forward. It shifts a significant amount of cost and risk to workers: you both have to pay for your own education (instead of getting paid while training) and take on a substantial risk that the skills you are training in will be relevant to an employer when you complete your training. It creates a large pool of people who have training no one needs (they guessed wrong on which skills a future employer needs in the future) and in too much debt to survive off of the income from unskilled labor. It's unsustainable.
If this doesn't shift back, to employers accepting the cost of training employees and the risk that they may train employees they don't need five years from now, we end up with yet another way for government to subsidize big business: government picks up the tab for training employees (through its educational spending) and for misjudging training needs (through unemployment spending). It's no different than Walmart paying their employees so little they are eligible for SNAP.
There has been a shift in the US from businesses providing training for workers to the expectation that workers will train themselves in advance of seeking employment.
I suspect this is the most untenable modern development in the US going forward. It shifts a significant amount of cost and risk to workers: you both have to pay for your own education (instead of getting paid while training) and take on a substantial risk that the skills you are training in will be relevant to an employer when you complete your training. It creates a large pool of people who have training no one needs (they guessed wrong on which skills a future employer needs in the future) and in too much debt to survive off of the income from unskilled labor. It's unsustainable.
If this doesn't shift back, to employers accepting the cost of training employees and the risk that they may train employees they don't need five years from now, we end up with yet another way for government to subsidize big business: government picks up the tab for training employees (through its educational spending) and for misjudging training needs (through unemployment spending). It's no different than Walmart paying their employees so little they are eligible for SNAP.