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Can I be really honest with you?
Green jobs aren’t going to save our hide. (h/t PunkRockHR.com)
Let that sink in for a few moments.
Done? Good.
When politicians talk about job creation, anyone with staffing experience has to be completely cynical about that. It sounds so lucrative. The President is going to create a million jobs by whenever. They’ll be family wage jobs. They’ll be in areas where people need help. And we will get it done!
Crowds cheer! Flags wave! At the end of the day though, you’re going to actually have to align the skills of the workforce with the skills that are needed in a new economy. A person who operated a robot on an assembly line in Detroit isn’t going to benefit from an engineering job in Eastern Washington. An HR professional can’t start maintenance work on a solar cell plant in the California desert.
Dropping tax credits into green energy is fine but let’s just be frank about this: it ain’t for the good of the working man and woman.
So what do we do? Well, if the government has its heart set on spending its way out of this, we could at least think about some better uses for that money:
- Construction work is fine, permanent work is better – Never got the emphasis on creating some short term jobs. Yes, immediate impact is good but the short term nature isn’t. Too short sighted.
- Pump money into community and technical colleges – Student grants, student loans and funding programs that are actually proactive in addressing business needs. Give people a path to a new line of jobs.
- Allow easier entry into entrepreneurship – Microloans, training and free services are one way. Making it easier for entrepreneurs to buy into health plans is another.
- Pump money into established small businesses – Again, you want to talk about job creation, it can happen with greater ease at the small business level.
- Connect credits with job placement – Easiest way to do this is a payroll tax credit. It is as close to an immediate benefit as you’ll get and the connection with jobs makes sense.
The point is creating jobs for people that can’t fill them is frustrating. It is frustrating to people who are out pounding pavement and people who are looking to find qualified people for their jobs.
What do you think? How do we better align our labor force with new workforce requirements? How do we redistribute our industrial and population base to align with some geographically dispersed opportunities?
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