Will there by a deficit for skills in growing occupations? Why or why not?

According to WorkForce 2020 by Richard W. Judy and Carol D' Amico, a profound skilled labor shortage is likely to exist within the United States in the coming decades. The increased demands of globalization made upon U.S. businesses, coupled with the more technologically sophisticated demands of white-collar occupations means that American businesses will have to cast their net farther a field to remain competitive with other major industrial powers. Also, as the population continues to age, and highly skilled workers retire, or do not have the desire or ability to acquire new technical skills, it will be necessary for businesses to find other populations to fill the vacated jobs, including skilled immigrant labor and outsourced labor.

However, Judy and D'Amico also sees seniors as an unexploited resource of potential talent in service jobs and a variety of other professions that need part-time, conscientious employees with a solid skills base. The need for all workers to have more sophisticated basic skills is at the foundation of Judy and D'Amico's concern about America's future, although their assessment is far from pessimistic. In short, they believe a more creative approach to human resources is necessary, else the United States fall behind its major competitors or fail to maximize its potential as a nation.

True, it is controversial amongst labor analysts as to whether a skilled-labor shortage truly exists. Regardless, a new model of education, training, and employment services to prepare workers for the jobs of the next century are required if America is to keep pace with the demands of the age of the Internet and digital technology, where even toddlers in the suburbs use cell phones and have computers in their bedroom. Workers, even entry-level...

It is true many recent immigrants are filling the roles that high school diploma-bearing Americans born in this nation used to fill. However, the children of these immigrants must be taught and trained as well, in better schools, so their skills exceed the skills of their parents, for soon even these jobs will begin to be replaced with technology, or part-time workers. Unskilled work such as assembly line works is no longer a potential career track to management, as it was at GE, for example. Few skilled professions do not have the need for employees to use computers, use higher mathematics, and follow complex directions.
America is also facing shortages in some critical professions, such as nursing, which are skilled, and which must be filled to meet the demands of the aging population on the demand side, rather than the labor supply side. Teachers must also grow more technically skilled so they can teach the modern workers of the future. As workers must think more creatively about their likely checkered career paths in the future, so much the institutions that educate those workers.

The collapse of the major American automotive companies, GM and Ford, coupled with the stratospheric rise of technical corporations such as Microsoft and Google in the American marketplace underline the essential truths of Workforce 2020. Perhaps Workforce 2020 will occur even more quickly than its projected date by the authors.