Word: fromstein
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...window," observes Jack Kyser, chief economist at the Los Angeles Economic Development Corp. Such signs also decorate the grocery stores, clothing boutiques and delicatessens filling strip malls across the continent. Not only are high sales creating many new jobs, but employee turnover is enormous. At these levels, says Mitchell Fromstein, CEO of Manpower Inc., the world's largest provider of temporary help, job experience, even the briefest exposure to hamburger flipping, is almost as sought after as a college degree in more skilled occupations. An employee who works a month or so at, say, a grocery-checkout counter and demonstrates...
Milwaukee-based Manpower Inc. offers free training in many skills to almost anyone who asks. The company, says CEO Fromstein, realized early that it could capitalize on the labor shortage by supplying clients with the trained and adaptable workers that the firms could not find on their own. Coopers & Lybrand is one of many employers "doing a lot more with internships," says James Lafond, a Washington-area managing partner. Internships offer training to young people while giving them and the company a chance to size one another...
...only 35% in 1980. "These are experienced people who are going to be more productive," he says, and their productivity is helping offset wage increases. They tend to stay in their jobs longer than younger workers, whose frequent churning creates heavy costs for employers. Reich and Fromstein both observe that employers have been inventive in finding "flexible" ways to reward workers without increasing fixed-wage costs. They are paying out relatively more in bonuses, commissions, stock options and other pay-for-performance schemes and relatively less in direct wages...
That may ease the labor shortage but will not end it. Demand for high-tech workers will still outstrip the number of new graduates versed in science and math, creating employment bottlenecks. Fromstein suggests that one solution would be to attract more female students into these fields, which are still regarded, irrationally, as "male oriented...
...change it is employers who must feel more nervous about their best employees' intentions, not the other way around. Fromstein summarizes the attitude of workers in the still blooming economy thusly: "I'll give you everything I've got while I'm here, but I understand you don't owe it to me to keep me for life, and if an outside opportunity comes up, I may take it." Whatever comes next in the economy or the stock market, job seekers have become entrepreneurs in their own right...