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  3. One puzzle of this somber economy is the existence of unfilled jobs in the m

One puzzle of this somber economy is the existence of unfilled jobs in the m

游客2024-10-08  14
问题     One puzzle of this somber economy is the existence of unfilled jobs in the midst of mass unemployment. You might think that with almost 14 million Americans unemployed—and nearly half those for more than six months—that companies could fill almost any opening quickly. Not so. Somehow, there’s a mismatch between idle workers and open jobs. Economists call this " structural unemployment.
    Let’s acknowledge two realities. First, though structural joblessness is important, the main cause of high unemployment remains the deep slump. In the recession, jobs dropped 20 percent in construction, 15 percent in manufacturing and 7 percent in retailing. Only a stronger economy can remedy this unemployment. Second, a big economy like ours always has some vacancies. People quit or get fired. Hiring procedures grind slowly. Some highly specialized jobs are inherently hard to fill: say, a transportation engineer fluent in both Chinese and English.
    The job mismatch hobbles recovery and bodes ill. The harder it is for workers to find jobs, the longer they stay unemployed—and this, in turn, worsens their prospects. " Long-term unemployment sends a negative signal to employers: What’s wrong with this person?" says Holzer. Some jobs lost in the recession and the associated skills won’t return.
    Theories abound as to what’s gone wrong. For skilled blue-collar jobs, high schools have de-emphasized vocational training, community colleges often aren’t well-connected to local job markets and union apprenticeship programs have withered, says Anthony Carnevale, director of Georgetown’s Center on Education and the Workforce. Another theory is that Americans are less willing to move to take jobs. The McKinsey study reports that, in the 1950s, one in five Americans moved every year; now it’s one in 10. "Work is more mobile than workers, " says Camden.
    Companies traditionally provided much training, but that may also have changed. Loyalties have weakened. Companies are more willing to fire; workers are more willing to jump ship. Training may seem a poor investment because workers won’t stay long enough to earn a return. In the McKinsey survey, companies denied cutting training budgets. But Carnevale and others think the training has altered. Before, firms provided more basic training in business or technology skills; now, firms expect workers to come with these skills and focus training on firm-specific practices and systems.
    So it’s a Catch-22: You can’t get hired unless you have experience; but you can’t get experience unless you’re hired. With technology changing rapidly, workers need to know more, even as their skills-support systems weaken. There is no instant cure for today’s job mismatch, but it might ease if America’s largest companies were a little bolder. Surely many of them—enjoying strong profits—could make a small gamble that, by providing more training for workers, they might actually do themselves and the country some good. [br] It can be inferred from the fifth paragraph that the employers
选项 A、seem to doubt whether the workers can stay long or not.
B、tend to spend less and less in training their employees.
C、focus on training suitable only to their own companies.
D、neglect the importance of basic training for business skills.
答案 C
解析 推断题。由题干定位至第五段。雇主不承认减少了培训经费，但研究发现他们培训员工的内容有变。根据该段最后一句，内容主要是适应本公司特殊情况的，而不是行业基本技能，故[C]为答案。员工的忠诚度下降，跳槽变得频繁，这已是不争的事实，而非雇主的疑虑，故[A]不合文意，应排除；关于培训经费是否减少，文章没有给出明确说法，因此[B]也应排除；雇主不愿意出资培训员工的基本技能主要是担心忠诚度降低，这笔投资没有回报，而不是忽视其重要性，故[D]也不符合文意。
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