美国就业市场是否存在技能缺口?

    The United States' job market has millions of unfilled jobs. Many of those jobs require technical skills. However, employers say many of those jobs are vacant because they cannot find people with the right skills to do the work. Labor experts call this paradox the "skills gap." A number of efforts have been launched to better understand and solve it.
    美国就业市场存在数百万空缺岗位。这些岗位多数要求职业技能。然而雇主表示,很多岗位空缺是因为他们找不到具备合适技能的人来填补。劳工专家称这种悖论为“技能缺口”,同时已经推出了很多措施来更好地理解和解决它。

    Rethinking training
    反思培训

    Nicholas Wyman wrote a book called, "Job U: How to Find Wealth and Success by Developing the Skills Companies Actually Need." He calls the skills gap, "a labor market mismatch -- people without jobs and jobs without people."
    尼古拉斯·怀曼(Nicholas Wyman)写了一本书,书名是《Job U: How to Find Wealth and Success by Developing the Skills Companies Actually Need》。他称这种技术缺口是劳动力市场无法将求职者和工作岗位匹配。

    In the United States, the cost of a traditional four-year college can be very high. U.S. colleges and universities produce many graduates every year. Yet unemployment rates among new graduates are high.
    在美国,传统四年制大学的费用非常昂贵。美国大专院校每年有很多学生毕业。然而应届毕业生的未就业率很高。

    Nicholas Wyman says a combination of technical classes and on-the-job training -- an apprenticeship --would be a better choice for many people. He notes that, "An apprenticeship is where you learn from a specialist, you are provided mentoring, you learn in an on the job environment, the old cliche is that you are actually paid to earn and learn."
    怀曼表示,技术课程和在职培训相结合,也就是学徒制可能是许多人一个更好的选择。他指出,学徒制是指跟从专业人员学习,并为你提供指导,你在工作环境下学习。老话说的是,你既赚到又学到。

    Mr. Wyman once served as an apprentice himself. He says apprenticeships are misunderstood in the United States, where "success" is often defined as attending a four-year college. But he notes that is changing as on-the-job training has spread outside traditional areas, like construction and manufacturing. He says apprenticeship possibilities are growing in some manufacturing jobs.
    怀曼先生自己就曾经担任学徒。他说,学徒工作在美国很容易被人误解。美国通常将“成功”定义为进入四年制大学。但他指出,当在职培训扩散到建筑业和制造业等传统领域,这一切都在改变。他说,一些制造业岗位的学徒可能性越来越大。

    Mr. Wyman also says it is vital to get technical skills that are of immediate value to an employer. He adds that it is important to get transferrable skills -- those that can be used in more than one job. This is because technology and the nature of the workplace are changing at a faster rate than before.
    怀曼先生还表示,获取雇主急需的技能至关重要。他补充说,获取可变通的技能--也就是适用多个工作的技能也很重要。这是因为科技和职场性质比以往变化更快。

    There are questions about the definition, size, and nature of the skills gap in the labor force. Iowa State University researchers studied some of these questions recently. They examined employment, education and population information, and found the evidence of a skills gap is weak.
    在劳动力技能缺口上存在着定义、规模和性质等疑问。爱荷华州立大学的研究人员最近调查了其中一些问题。他们调查了就业、教育和人口信息,发现技能缺口的证据很薄弱。

    Iowa State's Liesl Eathington noted that many policymakers and employers say there is opportunity in "middle skills" areas, like machining. Yet she said the most recent recession hit some of those job areas hard. She said students should be on guard because "our economy really isn't adding that many jobs that require the middle skills or middle educated territory."
    爱荷华州立大学Liesl Eathington指出,很多政策制定者和雇主表示,机械加工等中端技能领域存在机会。然而她说,最近的经济衰退沉重打击了这其中一些职业领域。她说,学生们应该警惕,因为我国经济并未增加这么多需要具备中端技能或中等教育的岗位。

    She said employers could get more well-qualified applicants if they offered higher wages. She noted that graduates of two-year training programs still generally make less money than graduates of four-year colleges.
    她说,如果雇主提供更高工资他们就能获得更多合格的求职者。她指出,两年培训项目的毕业生仍然比四年制大学毕业生普遍赚得少。

    The question of finding the right person for the right job remains a difficult one. The Department of Labor says 8.7 million Americans are unemployed and another 6.7 million can find only part-time work.
    为合适岗位找到合适人选仍然是一个难题。美国劳工部表示,目前有870万美国人失业,同时还有670万人只能找到兼职工作。

    I'm Mario Ritter.
    我是马里奥·理特(Mario Ritter)。(51VOA.COM对本文翻译保留全部权利,未经授权请勿转载,违者必究!)