Worker Skills and Job Requirements

understanding of the issues. In fact, the very existence of a skills
mismatch or skills shortage may be in doubt and is by no means as
obvious as often asserted.
The somewhat limited and not completely consistent data currently
available actually suggest that there is no evidence of declining
skill levels in the U.S. workforce. Although growth in educational
attainment decelerated in recent decades and cognitive test
scores are not much higher than 30 years ago, skill demands have
risen only gradually over time, with little direct evidence of any
recent acceleration in skill demands linked to growth in wage inequality.
Employers do complain about the skills of young workers
and high-school-educated workers, but it is unclear whether they
are dissatisfied mainly with workers’ cognitive skills or rather with
their effort and attitude. Also unclear is whether the decline in
workforce quality is a transitory, life-cycle problem of young adults
in general or a problem they will bear for all of their work lives, or
whether it applies only to some fraction of disadvantaged minorities.
Perhaps surprisingly, a lack of computer and other high-level
skills are not oft-cited complaints, despite the frequent focus on
computers as a principal source of skills change. Furthermore, the
claims of accelerating demand for college graduates also do not
seem to reflect employers’ expressed needs.
This study aims to improve understanding of the issues involved
in the skills mismatch debate. The first chapter provides some background
and an overview of the skills mismatch issue. The following
chapters review research on levels and trends in the skills workers
possess, the skills employers demand, and the evidence for skill
shortages or mismatches between the two. This tripartite structure
is dictated by the nature of the data, which precludes a unified treatment
of the question. There is limited reliable and representative
data on workforce competencies, even less on job demands, and
the evidence in each area is largely incommensurable. The need
for a standard, common set of measures for worker skills and job
skill requirements is the one key finding that emerges from this
review of the existing data.