The nation is facing a “skills gap” when it comes to matching jobs with employees. On one hand, we have a still-higher than acceptable unemployment rate. On the other hand, we have jobs going unfilled, here in the Inland Empire, in the state of California and across the country. Why is there such a disconnect between employment and employee and what can be done about it?

Community colleges traditionally provide career and technical education certificates, associate’s degrees and the first two years of college that will enable a student to transfer on to a university to complete a bachelor’s degree. However, we are now, as recipients of a number of federal and state grants, able to provide training that addresses this gap.

A skills gap is defined as “a significant gap between an organization’s current capabilities and the skills it needs to achieve its goals. It is the point at which an organization can no longer grow or remain competitive because it cannot fill critical jobs with employees who have the right knowledge, skills, and abilities”.

Skills gaps keep the company or agency from being as successful as it could be, which means it serves fewer customers or clients, cannot grow like it might, hires fewer employees, and pays less in taxes than a more successful company might. This impacts all of us economically eventually.

How big a problem is this? The McKinsey Global Institute June 2012 report, The world at work: Jobs, pay, and skills for 3.5 billion people, predicts “a potential global shortage of 38 to 40 million high-skills workers in 2020 (13 percent of the demand for such workers) and 45 million middle-skills workers (15 percent of the demand). Low-skills workers will be in least demand at 10 percent, a shortage of 90 to 95 million workers”.

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