America


Talent Shortage Threatens to Stifle Economic Growth


Expert warns employers can’t find enough millennials with a good work ethic to fill key jobs.


T BY JOHN MAC GHLIONN


he flagging american economy is being con- strained by a significant tal- ent shortage in the job mar-


ket, with positions that need to be filled urgently left vacant due to a lack of skilled workers. Author Michael Wiseman recently


noted in a piece for Big Think that roughly nine out of 10 executives and managers in the United States “say their organization is either facing a skills gap or is expecting to within the next five years.” By 2030, the article projects, the


country’s talent shortages could result in more than $160 billion in unreal- ized revenue. This fundamental mismatch


between the skills required by employ- ers and the skills possessed by pro- spective employees threatens the eco- nomic well-being of the country. The biggest worry facing modern


workers “isn’t that robots are taking all the jobs — it’s that there aren’t enough humans to take them,” according to a recent report from Los Angeles-based management consulting firm Korn Ferry. To be sure, this is a global issue,


not just an American one. But the U.S. appears to be one of the countries most affected by the crisis. In America, the Korn Ferry report emphasizes, many baby boomers are preparing to leave the workforce, ostensibly set to hand the baton to younger generations. Yet tens of millions of these young-


er workers simply won’t “have had the time or training to take many of the high-skilled jobs left behind.” Joel Kotkin, a man who has written


18 NEWSMAX | NOVEMBER 2022


extensively on the country’s crisis of talent and who’s described as “Amer- ica’s uber-geographer” by The New York Times, is sounding the alarm, too. He told Newsmax that the U.S. “has


a massive shortage of skilled labor — particularly in manufacturing.”


that are lacking on the job market. Nearly three-quarters of American employers “say they have a hard time finding college graduates with the soft skills they need,” Wiseman said, not- ing that “91% of talent acquisition pro- fessionals think soft skills will be very important in the future.” Making matters more complicated,


soft skills are tough to observe and measure. These skills are viewed subjectively,


and involve personal traits and habits that are nearly impossible to quantify. A person with decent soft skills can communicate effectively. As Wise- man stressed, soft skills — sometimes referred to as core skills — are appli- cable to all professions. They include abilities such as criti-


cal thinking, problem-solving, public speaking, teamwork, leadership, and a strong work ethic. And this crisis hasn’t come out of


the blue. A Deloitte report warned in


The nation’s schools, Kotkin said,


“are producing lots of people who are not really employable at salaries that reflect their education.” He cites another Korn Ferry report


to note that as many as 600,000 man- ufacturing jobs generated this decade won’t be filled. “The current shortage of welders


alone is expected to grow to 400,000 by 2024,” Kotkin said. “Much the same can be said about logistics, which basi- cally kept the country running amid the pandemic lockdowns.” Going forward, he added, a “short-


age of tanker drivers threatens gas deliveries.” But according to Wiseman, it’s not


just so-called “hard skills” — expertise in technically demanding positions —


2019 that many millennials — usu- ally defined as the generation born between 1981 and 1996 — lack these necessary soft skills, and thus are less likely to thrive in the workplace. Another report from career and workplace expert Lindsey Pollak found that millennials lack “untrain- able” skills such as a good work ethic and professional attitude. The generation born between 1997


and 2012 that followed millennials, Gen Z, doesn’t appear to be faring any better. In their bestselling book Gen Z


@ Work, David Stillman and Jonah Stillman discuss the shortcomings of America’s first generation of digital natives. According to the pair, some 37% of Gen Zers believe technology has hampered their ability to develop people skills.


©ALAMY


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