Employers Face Shortage Of College Grads By 2020: McKinsey & Company

From McKinsey Quarterly "The growing US jobs challenge: It could take more than five years—longer than after any postwar downturn—to replace the millions of jobs lost to the 2008–09 recession. How can the US rev up its job creation engine?" June 2011:

The United States faces a daunting challenge in creating jobs: at current rates, it will take until 2016 to replace the 7 million of them lost during the 2008–09 recession. To regain full employment—finding work for the unemployed and accommodating the 15 million Americans expected to enter the labor force this decade—the US economy must create 21 million jobs by 2020.***

• Assuming current trends, the United States will not have enough workers with the right education and training to fill the jobs likely to emerge. By 2020, there will be up to 1.5 million too few college graduates to meet demand—and 5.9 million more Americans without high school diplomas than employers can use.


• At all levels of postsecondary education, Americans are not getting the “job ready” skills that employers say they require. In our survey, 40 percent of the executives whose companies plan to hire next year said they’ve had unfilled openings for six months or longer because they cannot find qualified applicants.

Read the complete article here.