With close to 11 million unfilled jobs, more than 8 million unemployed Americans, and lackluster hiring that (according to the Department of Labor’s most recent jobs report) missed expectations by nearly half a million jobs, our economy is once again facing an employment paradox. Getting more Americans off the economic sidelines is important for both individual families and our economy overall.
But people aren’t widgets, and it’s not as simple as connecting the 8.4 million Americans who are out of work with the 11 million openings.
Whether the cause of this mismatch is workers who lack the skills employers want, or that a “great reassessment” is causing workers to reevaluate their jobs and seek new careers, the result is the same: Workers will need to learn new things. And that is where our workforce paradox may be exacerbated by another paradox: the paradox of choice.
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