Help wanted
Published August 28, 2014
Editorial by Greensboro News-Record, August 28, 2014.
Finding enough jobs for available workers isn’t the only labor challenge in Greensboro and High Point.
Some employers say they’ve had trouble finding qualified workers to fill job openings.
A new survey commissioned by the Chambers of Commerce in both cities and other groups, released Wednesday, reinforces the results of a similar inquiry two years ago.
There’s actually slight improvement. Employers responding to the survey reported 1,561 difficult-to-fill jobs during 2013, compared to 1,775 in 2011.
Both numbers offer just a portion of the overall picture. This year’s response rate was only 19 percent. There likely are many more job openings that take months to fill.
Usually, this contrary circumstance — jobs begging for workers in a high-unemployment economy — indicates what’s called a skills gap, where workers don’t have the necessary qualifications to meet employers’ needs. That’s a concern, because it can force companies to find other places to do business.
The chamber report’s author, UNCG professor Keith Debbage, sees evidence that the gap is narrowing.
“Are we getting better? Yes, but slightly,” he said in an interview.
With plentiful colleges and universities, several offering cutting-edge graduate programs, a skills gap should be a foreign concept in Greensboro. But the problem is complex. First, many highly skilled graduates are lured away by employers in other cities and states. Also, some hard-to-fill jobs are so specialized that they require very detailed training. But other jobs may be hard to fill because they pay relatively low wages.
Some jobs may go begging, Debbage’s report notes, as a “consequence of not offering candidates competitive salaries with our neighboring metropolitan markets in Charlotte and the Research Triangle.”
If that’s true, local employers need to step up. They won’t strengthen their workforce by trying to hire cheap labor in a competitive environment.
The new survey also found a decline in on-the-job training provided for new employees and retraining for current employees. Debbage speculated that financial stress may account for this trend but also noted, “Increasingly, companies expect employees to come in the door with skills.”
The survey found a small increase in the percentage of employers utilizing the services of the Greensboro/High Point/Guilford Workforce Development Board. The number relying on community college job-training programs was much higher at nearly 70 percent, but unchanged.
The “hard skills” most difficult to find included skilled trades, industry-specific certifications, engineering technologies, electronics and machining. “Soft skills” frequently mentioned as desirable were critical and analytical thinking, problem-solving and communication.
The survey didn’t put its numbers into the larger context. More than 235,000 people are employed in Guilford County, according to N.C. Department of Commerce data for July. Appropriately 19,000 are counted as unemployed, for a rate of 7.5 percent. If only about 1,500 jobs are considered hard-to-fill, the problem isn’t overwhelming.
Ideally, some of those 19,000 can improve their skill sets and find work. And, of course, thousands of new jobs are needed. Creating job opportunities is still more of a challenge than filling jobs that beg for workers.
