But the so-called skills gap explains only a part of the problem in filling those production jobs, experts say. Another, perhaps equally important reason jobs are going unfilled, is the gap between workers’ expectations and the wages employers are willing to offer, said James Brock, a Miami University economics professor.
“This is a supply-and-demand problem, and one way they (employers) can get more people is to offer to pay them more,’’ Brock said. “If there is a real shortage, they’re just going to have to bite the bullet and offer higher pay to get people.’’
A broad mismatch of jobs and skills in the labor market would result in a rapid increase in wages in hard-to-fill occupations as employers competed for new workers and the limited number of qualified workers still in the labor force, Brock said.
That’s not happening.
Average hourly wages for all private-sector workers rose in March at a 2.1 percent annualized growth rate, well below the 3.3 percent growth rate when the Great Recession began in December 2007, according to a recent report from the National Employment Law Project, an advocacy group for low-wage workers.
When adjusted for inflation, real hourly wages fell 0.6 percent for all private-sector workers in the year ending in March, the group said.
The trend is the same even in industries that complain of the most acute labor shortages: real wages for production workers fell even faster than wages for all private-sector workers last year, declining by 1 percent through the 12 months ended in March, government data shows.
Even the most coveted production workers saw their wages fall or flatline during the past year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Current Employment Statistics.
The median hourly wage in 2011 for tool-and- die makers, for example, was $22.43, or $46,650 a year, according to the BLS. That’s lower than the $22.56 median hourly wage, or $48,710 a year, for those workers in 2010.
“I think there’s kind of a wage reset period going on,’’ said Kathy Trautman of Manpower Dayton, the local franchise of the international staffing agency, Manpower Inc.
Trautman, whose company conducts proprietary wage surveys of local companies, said wages are down for entry-level production workers and “haven’t changed much” even for the most highly-skilled workers.
John Challenger, chief executive of the Chicago-based outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, said the wage figures indicate most employers’ needs are “nagging, not desperate.’’
“They need skilled workers, and they’re willing to hire them if they find them at the price they want,” Challenger said. “But most employers are not so hard-pressed that they have to alter their wage structure to hire them.
“They know that if they bring a bunch of new people at a higher wage than they’re paying their current workers, they’ll have to pay those workers even more,” he said. “The demand (for workers) is not so great that they have no choice but to raise wages.”
Challenger said the economy is growing so slowly that most companies are having little trouble meeting demand for their goods and services with workers already on the payroll. Still, they’re “trolling” for workers they’ll need when demand picks up, which may explain why advertised vacancies keep rising while the hires rate hasn’t changed much, he said.
In Ohio, the number of online help-wanted ads is at its highest level since 2005 with more than 188,000 listings posting online last month, according to recent figures from The Conference Board. In the Dayton area, online advertised vacancies have grown by an average of 460 during the past six months, the Conference Board reported.
But there are still about three unemployed workers for every job opening in the state and local area, about the same as the national supply-demand rate.
Charles Showell, dean of the college of business at Central State University, said the fact that so many highly-educated workers can’t find jobs is another sign that the skills-gap argument may be overstated.
“You’ve got a lot of people getting business degrees and finance degrees who end up working in restaurants as wait staff,” Showell said. “With so many graduates out there who are not gainfully employed, it’s hard to say there’s a lack of qualified workers for most professions.”
According to a Rutgers University study released last week, only about 50 percent of college graduates who earned diplomas between 2006 and 2011 now have full-time jobs. Of those, 40 percent work in jobs that don’t even require four-year degrees.
Another reason that some jobs are hard to fill is that they’ve become less appealing to future generations of workers, Showell said, citing manufacturing as a prime example.
Many modern-day production jobs require the same math, computer and problem-solving skills required for high-paying jobs in finance, information technology and business administration, he said, but those professions are considered more stable with brighter futures.
“People are going to be skittish about going into the manufacturing industry because of its recent history” of plant closings and mass layoffs, Showell said. “That makes it even more incumbent on employers to “incentivize’’ those jobs with higher salaries to attract the best and brightest.”
That’s true across all industries, Showell added: “Young people are going to go into those industries that have established pathways for upward mobility, and where employers are willing to pay for their skills.”
Challenger said some jobs have remained vacant because skilled workers who were displaced in the recession still have enough financial cushion and other resources to reject low-ball offers.
“Workers are trolling in a sense, too,” he said. “They’re saying I could take that job and work for less than I want, but I’m not willing to sell my services at that level.”
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