Sunday, October 3, 2010
White House Plans Job Training Partnership
In order to combat the high unemployment, President Obama is planning a public-private partnership to help retrain workers for jobs in high demand. "This new initiative is intended to help better align community college curriculums with the demands of local companies." Austin Goolsbee chairman of the Presidents Council of Economic Advisers said "'the goal is to encourage community colleges and other training providers to work in close partnership with employers, to design a curriculum where they want to hire the people coming out of these programs right away.'" The program is called Skills for Americas Future and is being partnered with Gap Inc, Accenture, United Technologies, P.G. & E., and McDonald's.
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This is a good start to decreasing unemployment. By doing this, firms won't have to spend time on firm-specific on the job training because the employees are already trained for the benefit.
ReplyDeleteAnother program that the government can start is matching program where they help people find jobs that are suitable for their skill type or even provide relocation funds so that people are motivated to move to those geographic areas with higher supply of jobs!
The only problem with this plan is that it is targeted for community colleges and students graduating from those institutions do not have high skill levels as those from 4-yr colleges or universities. The plan should be more inclusive and should be in partnership with more private companies.
ReplyDeleteOrganizations such as NASA already have such kind of program, where graduates from specific universities are hired. The appropriate training provided by those schools make their graduates better fit into many of NASA's projects.
Another benefit of this plan is that it is open to such a large section of the population that would potentially be unemployed. Community college is much cheaper than 4 year universities and would therefore be more possible for more people. If students know that they will have work once they graduate, they are also more likely to go through a program like this. I agree with Vanisha as far as adding these programs to 4-year institutions but I think this is a good first step.
ReplyDeleteI like that this plays right into reducing frictional unemployment. By creating easier ways for workers to be retrained or to learn a new trade is a great step toward reducing the amount of those who stay in the long-term unemployment group. Like it was mentioned in class long-term unemployment is often what causes the most critical issues.
ReplyDeleteBy offering these job training programs, this can effect frictional unemployment because people are unemployed workers are going to have incentive to get trained and work. When out of college, having good opportunities to work will should decrease unemployment numbers.
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