Say it like it is?
Via the Washington Post comes some interesting language.
Employers are raising education requirements even for entry-level positions.
Thirty-two percent of hiring managers and human resource professionals said they are hiring more employees with college degrees for positions that were historically held by high school graduates, according to a survey by CareerBuilder.
“While some of this may be attributed to a competitive job market that lends itself to college grads taking lower skill jobs, it also speaks to companies raising performance expectations for roles within their firms to enhance overall productivity, product quality and sales,” said Brent Rasmussen, president of CareerBuilder North America.
“[I]t also speaks to companies raising performance expectations for roles within their firms to enhance overall productivity, product quality and sales.”
That’s garbage.. It speaks to the slack in demand for labor creating downward pressure on wages while shifting the labor force down a peg or two on the career ladder. Moreover, this just reeks of ‘skills gap’ argument which is ‘business’ is using to justify low wages and the like. The problem with this argument? If there were a skills gap in some areas, then one would assume that wages would increase in some areas. That’s not happening, ergo, that line of argument is garbage.
Jurisdebtor,
Well yes, it is garbage…I find it amazing there isn’t laughter in the background….but then, maybe it is just such walking to the bank for them.
The whole education, skills mismatch things was always garbage. (We never saw wages rising, so there never was a mismatch worth spending a few bucks to fix.) Education is just a way of sorting out the surplus of potential employees. Just as recruiters tend to look for younger employees and those most recently employed, they look for those with more education.
One niece of mine has a BA, and she and most of her friends are in the hospitality business, a business once dominated by high school graduates and by elementary school graduates before that. If we still had elevator operators, they’d be asking for advanced degrees.
My other niece is looking for work in a more demanding (and much better paying) field, and one of their job requirements is that you blow off finals, fly across the country, attend a bogus “training” seminar, and then take make up exams. I’m surprised they don’t have to push marshmallows across the floor with their noses. Still, it will pay more than the hospitality business.