|
We routinely hear that employers can’t find enough skilled workers. But recent research complicates that narrative by suggesting that a part of this gap is actually due to employers raising educational and work experience requirements, not because the jobs demand it, but because slack labor markets allow them to be choosier and select higher skilled individuals. This is a phenomenon known as “opportunistic upskilling.”
The research comes from Alicia Sasser Modestino (Northeasten University), Daniel Shoag (Harvard University), and Joshua Ballance (Federal Reserve Bank of Boston). They analyzed 36.2 million online job postings aggregated by Burning Glass Technologies to identify the skill requirements employers use to screen candidates when filling vacancies. The results showed that education and experience qualifications grew as the unemployment rate rose after the recession. As the unemployment rate fell, so did the requirements. For example, the authors found that 15 percent of physician’s assistant jobs required a Bachelor’s degree or higher in 2007. But in 2010, the figure jumped to 35 percent; by 2017, it fell back down to 12 percent.
This trend is likely exacerbated by other labor market inefficiencies, namely that employers tend to use educational attainment and work experience as rough proxies for the skills a particular job demands. In an earlier study, Burning Glass found that “employers may be relying on a B.A. as a broad recruitment filter that may or may not correspond to specific capabilities needed to do the job.”
Far too often this practice screens out individuals who have the needed skills, but not the general degree. Employers need to better define the specific skills needed for available jobs and develop new approaches for assessing candidate competencies that can offer better pathways into these jobs. Ginni Rometty, the CEO of IBM, made this point last month in Davos: “So when it comes to education and skills, why government can’t solve it alone. I think businesses have to believe I’ll hire for skills, not just their degrees or their diplomas.”
This new research suggests that while there may be some structural changes occurring with the rising skills of various occupations, there may also be a cyclical effect of employers raising skill level expectations for jobs during periods of high unemployment. Still, skills are the new coin of the realm, making it more important than ever to better describe the specific skills needed for a job, to find better ways to assess them, and to improve the ways they are provided to workers.
This new research suggests that while there may be some structural changes occurring with the rising skills of various occupations, there may also be a cyclical effect of employers raising skill level expectations for jobs during periods of high unemployment.
|
