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I am an economist and I am very much not worried about this. 1/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/road-to-recovery/2021/02/17/unemployed-workers-retraining/
In the aftermath of any recession, when the unemployment rate is still elevated, *without fail* a ton of economists say “workers don’t have the skills for the jobs that are coming back.” Remember people making those claims incessantly in the aftermath of the Great Recession? 2/
But (surprise!) we got down to a 3.5% unemployment rate after the Great Recession without any enormous national initiative to accelerate education and training. Turns out it wasn’t a skills problem after all. It was a demand problem. 3/
THAT IS THE CASE HERE TOO. 4/
(To be clear, we definitely shouldn’t repeat the slow recovery from the Great Recession! That was a massive unforced error that we can avoid this time around by doing enough fiscal relief and recovery. Thankfully it seems like we are on track for that. Knocking on wood.) 5/
In case useful: here’s an absolutely fantastic paper by @snaidunl and @aaronsojourner for understanding workforce training programs. 6/ https://rooseveltinstitute.org/publications/employer-power-employee-skills-workforce-training-programs-labor-market-power/ @aaronsojourner @snaidunl
Response to a couple comments: I should be clear that I do not mean skills don’t matter. What I mean is that a *lack* of skills is not what’s keeping our unemployment rate elevated. It’s a lack of demand. 7/
Put another way: ramping up training could definitely help individuals (in some cases enormously) but it won’t increase the overall number of jobs—it isn't going to get people back to work en masse. For that we need to get the virus under control and stimulate demand. 8/
I totally agree with this take. https://twitter.com/ethanpollack/status/1362486597502062596?s=20
Btw, if I caught anyone off guard by being grouchy about this, I’m sorry! I’m scarred by our long history of public commentators weaponizing "WORKERS DON’T HAVE THE RIGHT SKILLS" as a distraction from doing the fiscal relief needed to get the economy on track after a recession.10
(Not to mention weaponizing it as a distraction from policies that will increase wage growth for low- and middle-wage workers, like increasing the minimum wage and reforming labor law to boost unions. But that, my friends, is a tweet thread for another day.) 11/
