Lundgren, Lena and Cohen, Iris (1998) The New Skills Mismatch? An Examination of Urban Employers' Perceptions About Public Job Training Participants as Prospective Employees. Journal of Social Service Research, 25 (1). pp. 109-124. ISSN 1540-7314
Full text not available from this repository.Abstract
Previous research has revealed the existence of a mismatch between the skills in demand in the urban labor market and the skill levels of large numbers of the urban poor. Numerous public job training efforts have been initiated to ameliorate this problem. Missing from the extensive evaluations of these programs has been the central issue of whether employers perceive public job training programs to have reduced the skills mismatch gap. Through the use of cross-sectional data analysis methods analyzing survey data from a survey of 693 Chicago area employers, we find that almost half of these employers perceive there to be a skills mismatch between their needs for entry-level workers and the skills of public job training participants. Moreover, the employers who perceive there to be a skills mismatch are those who hire white-collar entry-level workers and those who perceive that public job training participants have poor work habits and are racial and ethnic minorities.