It’s pretty interesting how tightly we focus on the unemployment rate during a recession, but rarely hear anything about weird discrepancies like this.  From a recent David Brooks piece in the NY Times…

One of the perversities of this recession is that as the unemployment rate has risen, the job vacancy rate has risen, too. Manufacturing firms can’t find skilled machinists. Narayana Kocherlakota of the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank calculates that if we had a normal match between the skills workers possess and the skills employers require, then the unemployment rate would be 6.5 percent, not 9.6 percent.

There are several factors contributing to this mismatch (people are finding it hard to sell their homes and move to new opportunities), but one problem is that we have too many mortgage brokers and not enough mechanics.

There’s an intriguing new off-shoot of the perhaps-too-simply-defined “sustainability movement” that’s reexamining the craftsman blue collar life – beyond farming – as an alternative to the celebrated, yet disconnected white collar alternative.  Working with your hands, performing complex problem-solving, having tangible results of your work, etc.  Matthew Crawford’s Shop Class as Soulcraft uses motorcycle repair as his real-life example of this.

Welp, if you buy into it, it sounds like there are plenty of job opportunities out there for you!

Decatur High School’s Career Academy can’t come soon enough.