Skills Gap In America - Essay Example

At this point, it becomes necessary to ask the question; what job skills or talents are lacking? In answering this question, the truth is that the USA may not be short of individuals who are educated and who possess some education qualifications that are essential for the prevailing job openings within organizations. Therefore, the skills gap is not lacking in the education aspect of the employees, but rather in their talents (Wastler, n.p.). The existing skills gap is especially being felt in the areas of the high growth industries, which include construction, advanced manufacturing, nuclear and clean energy, health care and information technology (Dahl, n.p.).

While there could be some qualified individuals in the unemployed group that constitutes 8.1%, their ability to tolerate the working conditions in these sectors, as well as their talent that are necessary in achieving the goals of these sectors is what is exactly lacking (Wastler, n.p.). This is true, considering that these are sectors that require more than just academic qualifications, but the basic talents and willingness to go an extra mile to ensure the success of the tasks. The remedy to addressing this problem therefore, can be found in addressing the public policy on education, starting from K-12 level upwards, to ensure that the policies focuses more on specialized skills, which include the technical and the apprenticeship skills, that are basically lacking in many industries, considering that such skills constitutes the on-hand-job training, at the expense of theoretical build-up of the academic training (Needham, n.p.).

Such on-hand-job skills are the ones lacking experts, thus throwing the essential industries such as construction, manufacturing, health and energy; most of which are hand-on-experience based, into disarray. The existing skills gap in America is talent-based, and constitutes the shortage of middle-skills workers, who constitute “specialized highly trained mechanical, technical and production careers” (ASTD, 5). Such specialized training does not require high levels of education such as a degree in the specified field, but the high on-the-job training skills, which produces technical experts, who may merely hold a government or an institutional certification, yet they are highly competent when it comes to performing the specific tasks on the job description, which may require less theoretical knowledge, but practical skills to deliver excellent results.

The high-skills shortage is especially significantly being experienced in the field of mathematics, engineering, information science and sciences (ASTD, 6). Among the most affected specific fields include the field of nuclear energy, where the rate of the workers retiring is high, while the young generation that is showing interest in the same is significantly reducing, while the growth in the sector is predicted to average at 3% annually, for the next 8 years (ASTD, 6). In addition to the waning interest that is noted in the young generation, there also lacks adequate training programs to train experts in this field, thus posing a danger to the growth and competitiveness of nuclear energy as a