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Message: <blockquote data-quote="texan" data-source="post: 1053074" data-attributes="member: 38206">The other part of unemployment: 600,000 unfilled jobs because workers lack basic skills like answering the telephone properly or staying drug free.At a recent dinner in Washington, D.C., with representatives from major American manufacturing companies, I listened as the talk turned to how hard it is to find qualified applicants for jobs."What exactly are the skills you can't find?" I asked, imagining that openings for high-tech positions went begging because, as we hear so often, the training of the U.S. workforce doesn't match up well with current corporate needs.One of the representatives looked sheepishly around the room and responded: "To be perfectly honest . . . we have a hard time finding people who can pass the drug test." Several other reps gave a knowing nod.Applicants were often so underqualified, they said, that simply finding someone who could properly answer the telephone was sometimes a challenge.But considerable evidence suggests that many employers would be happy just to find job applicants who have the sort of "soft" skills that used to be almost taken for granted. In the Manpower Group's 2012 Talent Shortage Survey, nearly 20% of employers cited a lack of soft skills as a key reason they couldn't hire needed employees. "Interpersonal skills and enthusiasm/motivation" were among the most commonly identified soft skills that employers found lacking.Employers also mention a lack of elementary command of the English language. A survey in April of human-resources professionals conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management and the AARP compared the skills gap between older workers who were nearing retirement and younger workers coming into the labor pool.More than half of the organizations surveyed reported that simple grammar and spelling were the top "basic" skills among older workers that are not readily present among younger workers.The SHRM/AARP survey also found that "professionalism" or "work ethic" is the top "applied" skill that younger workers lack.<a href="http://www.amazon.com/forum/politics?_encoding=UTF8&cdForum=Fx1S3QSZRUL93V8&cdThread=Tx2370LLPIHGAM" target="_blank">Amazon.com: Customer Discussions: The other part of unemployment: 600,000 unfilled jobs because workers lack basic skills like answering the telephone properly or staying drug free.</a>So after reading the above, the years and years of video games, TV, electronics, lack of parentalinvolvement, lack of role models that have substance, lack of morals and ethics, has taken it's toll.</blockquote>

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