Too Many Jobs--Not Enough Workers

That’s a headline you don’t see in the employment section of your local newspaper. In fact, a recent article in the Philadelphia Inquirer reported one out of two college graduates in the Philadelphia area with college degrees is unemployed. That is higher than the national average of one in three. The article told the story of a young man with an economics and journalism degree, still living at home with his parents, unable to get a job in his field. He was still looking.

While this is a serious problem for anyone in this position, employers in other states have a different problem. They have too many jobs and can’t find workers to fill them. Georgia farmers have openings for 11,000 workers to pick peaches, blueberries and peanuts. Alabama has a similar problem. In an attempt to solve one problem, another has taken its place. This is not a condemnation or approval of any decision, but a contrast with a national unemployment rate hitting over nine percent, thousands of educated and willing young people looking for work, and the lack of workers for an abundance of certain manual labor jobs.

I’m not suggesting that all the unemployed college grads in Philadelphia (and other states as well along the way) volunteer to go to Georgia to pick peaches and save the farmers. (If they did, it would probably make the headlines of the Philadelphia Inquirer as the greatest, most selfless humanitarian community outreach project of the century.) Both Georgia and Alabama tried to fill the gap by hiring local workers, using probationers and even inmates. Not one of the solutions was successful. With every month, the gap is widening between available work and the available workforce.

Our elected officials on both sides of the aisle in Washington are struggling with solutions to this national crisis. They offer proposals for “shovel ready” jobs in construction, infrastructure repair and other labor-intensive industries. While that will certainly put some people to work, it may not have an impact on thousands of unemployed young college graduates or hundreds of thousands who are currently in college, working hard for the degree that is supposed to bring them a bright and lucrative future.

The entry-level supervisory or trainee jobs that used to be the first rung on the success ladder are disappearing. In the two years since the recession began (is it really over?), companies had to make changes in order to survive, and many realized that technology could do a lot of tasks that staff people or middle managers used to do. They found a software package or app to handle it. The jobs that still need to be done, like harvesting America’s food supply, go unfilled.

The Inquirer article finished with some dire predictions, but also with hope. One young woman is working to purchase equipment needed to open a practice as a court reporter. A young man is working three part-time jobs while building up a barber practice. “Hair always grows,” he said. While the job market is changing, the American spirit and work ethic is alive and well in the new generation workforce.

Mary Nestor-Harper, SPHR, is a consultant, blogger, motivational speaker and freelance writer for phillyjobs.com. Based in Savannah, GA, her work has appeared in Training magazine, Training & Development magazine, Supervision, BiS Magazine and The Savannah Morning News. When she’s not writing, she enjoys singing with the Savannah Philharmonic Chorus and helping clients reinvent their careers for today’s job market. You can read more of her blogs at phillyjobs.com and view additional job postings on Beyond.com.