Graph(s) of the Day: Can Higher Education Solve the Jobs Crisis?
By Benjamin Landy
With the fragile U.S. economy struggling to recover and millions of Americans still out of work, many pundits and policy makers have taken to claiming that high unemployment is a structural, not cyclical problem. In other words, the issue is not that there is low consumer demand — and therefore low demand for workers — but rather that unemployed workers do not have the skills or education that employers require. Further, it is claimed that as the economy returns to full employment, businesses will be stymied by a significant lack of qualified college graduates.
However, a recent report (PDF) by the Economic Policy Institute shows that there is little evidence to support the claim that higher education is the solution to the current jobs crisis, including rising wage and income inequality.
According to Lawrence Mishel, the author of the report, there have been far too few job openings for all of the unemployed looking for work, suggesting the underlyling economic problem remains cyclical low demand. As the above graph from the report shows, the ratio of unemployed workers per job opening remains nearly twice as high as at the peak of the 2001 recession. And the current jobs shortfall is not just in one or two affected industries, like construction, but across all sectors. Neither does one education group account for the increase in long term unemployment, as the structural argument would suggest.
