Hope dashed: Job retraining doesn't work

July 6, 7:11 PMPhoenix Conservative ExaminerScott Martin

Previous Next

Comment Print Email RSS Subscribe

Subscribe

Get alerts when there is a new article from the Phoenix Conservative Examiner. Read Examiner.com's terms of use.

Email Address   Include other special offers from Examiner.com Terms of Use

President Obama's Porkulus plan will direct $1.4 billion into job retraining and other services for people who have lost their jobs. Given the ever growing number of people who now fit that description, some might be inclined to question whether even that huge amount of money is enough. But it turns out the question is moot, since available evidence indicates that job retraining, much like the President's "stimulus" plan as a whole, doesn't actually work.

In Michigan, where the unemployment rate in May was 14.1 percent, the nation’s highest, 78,000 people are enrolled in the state’s No Worker Left Behind program and 7,800 are on the waiting list...

Nonetheless, a little-noticed study the Labor Department released several months ago found that the benefits of the biggest federal job training program were “small or nonexistent” for laid-off workers. It showed little difference in earnings and the chances of being rehired between laid-off people who had been retrained and those who had not.

So we spend all this money on something that makes "little difference." On second thought, maybe we should be applauding this program, since the stimulus money we've spent already is making things worse. Perhaps under Obama, we now hope for "little difference" as the goal for all government spending.

The program doesn't work for all sorts of commonsense reasons that the liberal do-gooders like to ignore when they come up with their social experiments.

Many workers who have lost their jobs are older and had spent their lives working in one industry. In need of a job right away, many pick relatively short training programs, which often have marginal benefits. Job retraining is also ineffective without job creation, a point made by several economists who have long cautioned against placing too much stock in it. Finally, workers trying to pick a new field cannot predict the future of the labor market, especially in a time of economic upheaval.

But every time we question the plans of the do-gooders, we are told we lack compassion. Want to do some good? Slash the corporate income tax. Dramatically. End of recession, tomorrow. Instead we get junk solutions like this.

An examination by The New York Times of one group of laid-off workers — 36 people who finished their retraining at Macomb Community College just outside Detroit at about the same time as Mr. Hutchins, from May to August 2008 — found that at least 60 percent appeared either not to be working or to be in jobs unrelated to their training.

Several had jobs but then lost them later, according to state wage records and interviews. And a review of wages for several employed workers before and after training showed that almost all had lost ground.

What about those jobs that are nearly shovel-ready? Surely that will fix things, right?

They seized upon the stimulus program’s investment in public works as a place for job growth. But Mr. Hutchins confessed he was uncertain whether those jobs would still be around in a year and a half when he finished his civil engineering classes.

“It’s a crap shoot,” he said. “You’re gambling with your life.”

Sad. But it sounds good as a motto for socialized medicine doesn't it?

ObamaCare: You're gambling with your life.