The time needed to fill jobs

The time needed to fill jobs



From the comments:



It’s encouraging that Cowen is less prone to mood affiliation; he is a scholar, first and foremost. The skills gap purveyors remind me of the authors of the study that concluded that the spike in employment in 2014 was attributable to the cutoff of unemployment benefits at the end of 2013. I don’t doubt that skills are relevant, as are policies that discourage work, but why latch onto politically convenient explanations for complex phenomena. A less politically convenient explanation for the “skills gap” is that employers don’t wish to invest in training the way they once did, in part because employment is no longer a lifetime commitment (from either the employer or the employee), in part because of recent experience and a hangover of pessimism about economic stability, in part because, well, there are likely many parts. When I was a young lawyer in the 1970s, the best law firms only recruited at the law schools, eschewing experienced lateral hires (those without a “skill gap”) because the firm wanted its lawyers to be trained in the firm way. Sure, there was a certain arrogance involved, but there was good reason for wanting the firm’s lawyers to reflect the firm’s approaching to lawyering. That seems quaint today, as law firms raid one another to fill the “skills gap” for whatever the latest hot market for lawyering skills (intellectual property, health care, whatever). And so it goes from law to banking to programming and down the line. The relationship between employer and employee has changed (indeed, the growing preference is for a relationship other than employer-employee), some say for the worse, others say for the better. My view is that we should adopt policies that encourage employment, and terminate policies that discourage employment, that we should adopt policies that encourage training, mutual commitment, and long-term employment, and terminate policies that discourage training, commitment, and long-term employment. That’s a tall order, much taller than attributing unemployment to the “skills gap”. - See more at: http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/06/the-time-needed-to-fill-jobs.html#sthash.HKaWtSpe.dpuf