December 21, 2011
The NYT reported that the Republicans in the House want the federal government to allow states to use unemployment insurance tax revenue to pay for job training. It quotes Representative James B. Renacci on this topic:
“In this uncertain economy, using unemployment dollars to subsidize the training of a new employee to re-enter the work force is just good public policy.”
It would have been worth pointing out that there is no major sector of the economy that seems to be short of workers. Real wages are flat or declining in every major occupational grouping. There is no occupation where job openings are especially high relative to job seekers (the overall average is more than 4 to 1).
If there are not obvious jobs for which to train workers, government training programs sound like a great example of ill-considered social engineering.
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