Help Wanted; Assessing the Skills Gap (ICW report)

America remains a leader in innovation, but its workforce is falling behind. Education and workforce development systems have not kept pace with the demands of the 21^st century, and we all bear the costs of this failure… Basic training programs alone cannot bridge the skills gap. As a result, more than 3 million jobs continue to go unfilled despite high, persistent unemployment.

 The choice is clear: We can act swiftly to bridge the U.S. skills gap, or we can sit back and watch our competitors prosper while our economy plods along.

 So how do we bridge the skills gap?  


 In the attached report, we hear directly from the education and business leaders who strive to manage the skills gap challenge every day. They share with us the deficiencies in their current and future talent pools and outline their vision of what it will take for the United States to regain its footing as the most skilled workforce in the world. 

These leaders ultimately remain confident that we can fix our education and workforce development systems, and they are prepared to work with local and national leaders to get the job done. We hope policymakers and education leaders will join us in putting America back to work

Help Wanted; Assessing the Skills Gap

~ The Institute for a Competitive Workforce (ICW) is the nonprofit, nonpartisan, 501(c)(3) affiliate 

of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. ICW promotes the rigorous educational standards and 

effective job training systems needed to preserve the strength of America’s greatest economic 

resource, its workforce. 

© Institute for a Competitive Workforce, September 2012.