Word: laborer
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Labor shortages have indisputably become a major drag on the continuing boom. In a survey of 441 "trendsetter" companies released in April by Coopers & Lybrand, a large accounting and consulting firm, almost 70% reported that they were having trouble finding skilled workers. More than a quarter were decreasing growth estimates, delaying or canceling expansion plans and overhiring--or trying to--in anticipation of a still tighter job market. Bear in mind that these companies were chosen for the survey because over the past five years they had been among the fastest-growing businesses in the country...
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...
...Clinton Administration's former Secretary of Labor, Robert Reich, now a professor at Brandeis University, sees more than that to be optimistic about. He notes that almost half the current work force is between the ages of 35 and 50, vs. 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...
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...
...shift as you seem to believe. I think it meant only one thing: Harvard students believe that at least one person on campus ought to be concerned with those elements of student life which daily affect them. I think it is fantastic for the editorial board, the Progressive Student Labor Movement, and the Harvard-Radcliffe Republican Club to lobby for whatever external social issues concern them. And I don't think our society can ever have enough of that type of lobbying...