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I'm not sure that education is the big problem, but it's definitely up there. I think probably the financial climate leading to unemployment/underemployment is

I'm not sure that education is the big problem, but it's definitely up there. I think probably the financial climate leading to unemployment/underemployment is a bigger one, but significantly more difficult to fix.

choxi 14y ago
but I think that lack of relevant education is the largest contributing factor to unemployment. for example, american manufacturing is actually doing great right now, the problem is that it's become more efficient and can do without labor workers so while the businesses flourish there are less people to employ. source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/01/10/144978487/the-tuesday-podcast-the-past-and-future-of-american-manufacturing http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/01/10/144978487/the-tues...
- hanibash 14y ago
  In regards to relevant education, I think Amazon's career choice program is a good example of targeting the right industries. From Jeff Bezos letter: "We’re offering to pre-pay 95% of the cost of courses such as aircraft mechanics, computer-aided design, machine tool technologies, medical lab technologies, nursing, and many other fields. The program is unusual. Unlike traditional tuition reimbursement programs, we exclusively fund education only in areas that are well-paying and in high demand according to sources like the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, and we fund those areas regardless of whether those skills are relevant to a career at Amazon."
- randomdata 14y ago
  > I think that lack of relevant education is the largest contributing factor to unemployment. I hear this often, but I am always left wondering what jobs will rise out of the woodwork if the condition became true? It is easy to say lack of education is the problem because it is the common filter used when hiring, so it is highly visible, but one only needs to look to the software industry to see perfectly capable programmers struggling to find work in what is supposed to be a hot market with companies crying for help. I believe it is far more complex, and may not relate to education at all.
codegeek 14y ago
Education itself is not the problem. Education is good. Problem is in the fact that to prove education, we need degrees which means we need to come up with outrageous amount of tuition fee to pay. Why do we have an ever rising tuition fee ? Probably because colleges know they can get away with it due to funding/subsidies. Colleges also know that a degree is a major rquirement to even try and get a decent job these days that pays more than minimum wage (outliers are there of course). So it does not matter if they charge 100K for a degree.
jfarmer 14y ago
Imagine a world where you can retrain yourself on the order of months, not years, and take on little or no debt to do it. How would that impact unemployment or underemployment? When Obama stands in front of a bankrupt auto factory in Detroit and says, "We'll retool these factories and retrain these workers to produce wind turbines, solar panels, and electric cars!", how do we do it? People are desperate to answer that question and services like bloc.io, Udacity, Coursera, Khan Academy, University Now, etc. are just our best first answers. Education is more than a big problem: it's the root problem. Caveat lector: I help run http://devbootcamp.com http://devbootcamp.com and the bloc.io guys work out of our offices 2-3 days per week.
- jellicle 14y ago
  >Imagine a world where you can retrain yourself on the order of months, not years, and take on little or no debt to do it. How would that impact unemployment or underemployment? It would have very little effect on un- or underemployment, since un- and underemployment are driven by demand, not supply. There is zero evidence that unemployment in the United States today is driven by a mismatch between skills-employers-want and skills-workers-have, for instance. Paul Krugman discusses this in a few of his columns.
  - yummyfajitas 14y ago
    It would have very little effect on un- or underemployment, since un- and underemployment are driven by demand, not supply. Funny - demand is doing just fine. It's only employment that is suffering. See stats here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2240468 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2240468 The Keynesians haven't been proven wrong on their claims that increased demand -> increased production. It's the part where increased production -> increased employment that they have been shown conclusively to be incorrect.
    - jellicle 14y ago
      I feared that mentioning Krugman would bring out the Krugman-haters with their nonsense. Sadly, I was right to fear. You know that the Fed statistics that you cite show that, for example, durable goods production is down 6% since 2007? Even though population has increased in that time. That is to say, the graphs support what I said and what Paul Krugman says, not the nonsense that you think you've learned from Fox News. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/27/opinion/27krugman.html http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/27/opinion/27krugman.html http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/09/a-structural-blast-from-the-past/ http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/09/a-structural-bla...

choxi 14y ago

but I think that lack of relevant education is the largest contributing factor to unemployment. for example, american manufacturing is actually doing great right now, the problem is that it's become more efficient and can do without labor workers so while the businesses flourish there are less people to employ. source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/01/10/144978487/the-tuesday-podcast-the-past-and-future-of-american-manufacturing http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/01/10/144978487/the-tues...

hanibash 14y ago
In regards to relevant education, I think Amazon's career choice program is a good example of targeting the right industries. From Jeff Bezos letter: "We’re offering to pre-pay 95% of the cost of courses such as aircraft mechanics, computer-aided design, machine tool technologies, medical lab technologies, nursing, and many other fields. The program is unusual. Unlike traditional tuition reimbursement programs, we exclusively fund education only in areas that are well-paying and in high demand according to sources like the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, and we fund those areas regardless of whether those skills are relevant to a career at Amazon."
randomdata 14y ago
> I think that lack of relevant education is the largest contributing factor to unemployment. I hear this often, but I am always left wondering what jobs will rise out of the woodwork if the condition became true? It is easy to say lack of education is the problem because it is the common filter used when hiring, so it is highly visible, but one only needs to look to the software industry to see perfectly capable programmers struggling to find work in what is supposed to be a hot market with companies crying for help. I believe it is far more complex, and may not relate to education at all.

codegeek 14y ago

Education itself is not the problem. Education is good. Problem is in the fact that to prove education, we need degrees which means we need to come up with outrageous amount of tuition fee to pay. Why do we have an ever rising tuition fee ? Probably because colleges know they can get away with it due to funding/subsidies. Colleges also know that a degree is a major rquirement to even try and get a decent job these days that pays more than minimum wage (outliers are there of course). So it does not matter if they charge 100K for a degree.

jfarmer 14y ago

Imagine a world where you can retrain yourself on the order of months, not years, and take on little or no debt to do it. How would that impact unemployment or underemployment? When Obama stands in front of a bankrupt auto factory in Detroit and says, "We'll retool these factories and retrain these workers to produce wind turbines, solar panels, and electric cars!", how do we do it? People are desperate to answer that question and services like bloc.io, Udacity, Coursera, Khan Academy, University Now, etc. are just our best first answers. Education is more than a big problem: it's the root problem. Caveat lector: I help run http://devbootcamp.com http://devbootcamp.com and the bloc.io guys work out of our offices 2-3 days per week.

jellicle 14y ago
>Imagine a world where you can retrain yourself on the order of months, not years, and take on little or no debt to do it. How would that impact unemployment or underemployment? It would have very little effect on un- or underemployment, since un- and underemployment are driven by demand, not supply. There is zero evidence that unemployment in the United States today is driven by a mismatch between skills-employers-want and skills-workers-have, for instance. Paul Krugman discusses this in a few of his columns.
- yummyfajitas 14y ago
  It would have very little effect on un- or underemployment, since un- and underemployment are driven by demand, not supply. Funny - demand is doing just fine. It's only employment that is suffering. See stats here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2240468 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2240468 The Keynesians haven't been proven wrong on their claims that increased demand -> increased production. It's the part where increased production -> increased employment that they have been shown conclusively to be incorrect.
  - jellicle 14y ago
    I feared that mentioning Krugman would bring out the Krugman-haters with their nonsense. Sadly, I was right to fear. You know that the Fed statistics that you cite show that, for example, durable goods production is down 6% since 2007? Even though population has increased in that time. That is to say, the graphs support what I said and what Paul Krugman says, not the nonsense that you think you've learned from Fox News. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/27/opinion/27krugman.html http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/27/opinion/27krugman.html http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/09/a-structural-blast-from-the-past/ http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/09/a-structural-bla...