The economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has left 14 million Americans without jobs. And yet, amid such unprecedented levels of unemployment, there are still 5.9 million unfilled jobs. This fact speaks to the ways many of our education and training programs have failed to keep up with the skills today’s employers demand.
This challenge existed long before the pandemic. In recent years, record full employment created a tight labor market where nearly 3 in 4 employers said they had a hard time finding graduates with the right kinds of soft skills. Jobs were aplenty, but recent graduates still continued to struggle to find meaningful employment. In February 2020, just a month before the pandemic lockdown began, the underemployment rate for recent college graduates was 41.2 percent.
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