A mismatch is brewing between the supply of skilled workers in New England and the increasing demand for such workers, according to a new report by the New England Public Policy Center at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.The study by senior economist Alicia Sasser Modestino shows that, over the next 10 years, New England will face not only a shortfall in the number of workers it needs to pull th...
“About every two years someone comes up with this story. There is absolutely nothing to it—it's simply not true,” Peter Capelli, Professor, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, commenting on the Georgetown's college labor supply shortage forecast.
—“Prediction of Worker Shortage Has Critics,” The Press-Enterprise (Riverside, Calif.), April 10, 2010.
The recent response by Anth...
The notion of the "college labor market" as a fixed set of occupations is remarkably static. In contrast, we assume that job and skill requirements are dynamic.
(This lively debate over future demand of college-educated workers will continue in our Forum.)
Northeastern University economists Paul E. Harrington and Andrew M. Sum argue that in our recent report Help Wanted, we “radically over...
Last week, a banker asked us a thoughtful question about the relatively low unemployment rate among adult bachelor’s degree holders (25 years and older) we had written about in The New England Journal of Higher Education. Noting that the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) release this month shows those age 25 or older with a bachelor’s degree have an unemployment rate of 4.5%. he as...
June 2009 is seen by many as the end of the Great Recession. Strong growth in GDP following massive monetary and fiscal responses to the collapse in housing and financial markets meant that the economy was on the mend. Yet a year later, 1.1 million fewer people are working, and the unemployment rate is stuck at 9.5%. Worse still, more than one million individuals have left the job market since Apr...
