Failure of Education Systems in Europe Leads to Widespread Unemployment Amidst Demand for Tech Workers

Government Fails Europeans in Many Ways

Conservatives complain that government is part of the problem not part of the solution.  To the extend that governments fail to provide basic services and successfully complete their mission, this charge is true, but of course those failures are largely the result of conservative policies.  Conservatives in Europe have moved to restrict and reduce government, to the detriment of all.

So the news in Europe as far as employment is concerned is that the labor force, for lack of education and training does not have the skills to fill the job openings.

There is just one hitch: Not enough people are qualified to fill all the jobs. In some cases, the companies have had to look outside Ireland to recruit candidates with the right skills.

After a five-year economic crisis, the mismatch represents one of the thorniest problems facing Ireland and many other European countries. Hundreds of thousands of people who lost work, and many young people entering the work force, are finding that their skills are ill suited to a huge crop of innovation-based jobs springing up across the Continent.

“In all countries, there is an expectation that many of the new jobs created will be in the knowledge-intensive economy,” said Glenda Quintini, a senior labor economist at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. “But we are seeing a worrisome skills mismatch that means a large number of unemployed people are not well prepared for the pool of jobs opening up.”

So why is this the fault of government?  Because government has the role of educating and training the work force.  And in Europe the policy makers made a terrible misjudgment.  The felt that the economy would respond to austerity, which as anyone who has gotten a C or better in Econ 101 knows was the wrong policy. 

But not to worry, all those policy makers and government officials who have visited huge misery on the populace still have their comfortable high paying jobs.