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The National Center on the Educational Quality of the Workforce's National Employer Survey represents a unique source of information on how employers recruit workers, organize work, invest in physical capital, and use education and training in the workplace. The U.S. Bureau of the Census administered it as a telephone survey to a nationally representative sample of private establishments with more than 20 employees in both the manufacturing and nonmanufacturing sectors. Of the 3,358 establishments contacted, completed surveys were received from 1,621 manufacturing firms and 1,324 nonmanufacturing firms. Findings indicate that most employers provide some type of formal training program. Employers who have adopted some characteristics of "high performance work systems" and have made large investments in physical capital or have hired workers with higher average educational level are more likely to train workers within their establishment. Most employers are more likely to provide specific training, such as orientation for new workers, health and safety, and new methods or procedures training, rather than numeracy, literacy, and basic education. The type of training program offered varies considerably by employer size and industry. The determinants of the proportion of workers trained look similar to those of the probability of offering formal training. The impact of training investments by employers differs according to their nature, timing, and location. (Contains 16 references.) (YLB)

Some of the few U.S. studies on the link between training and productivity have used a subjective measure of productivity or a measure of the productivity of the most recently hired worker relative to a fully trained worker, rather than output, labor productivity, total factor productivity, or value-added measures. Administered by the U.S. Bureau of the Census as a telephone survey to a nationally representative sample of private establishments with more than 20 employees in both the manufacturing and nonmanufacturing sectors, the National Center on the Educational Quality of the Workforce's National Employer Survey represents a unique source of information on how employers recruit workers, organize work, invest in physical capital, and use education and training in the workplace. What makes this survey different from most other training surveys is its ability to examine the impact that all these factors have on the output of establishments and the wages of workers. A total of 1,621 of the 2,441 eligible manufacturing establishments returned completed surveys. Findings of the manufacturing part of the survey indicate that most employers provide some type of formal training program. Employers who have adopted some characteristics of "high performance work systems" and have made large investments in physical capital or have hired workers with higher average educational level are more likely to train workers within their establishment. The determinants of the proportion of workers trained look similar to those of the probability of offering formal training. The type and source of training are important determinants of the impact of training on productivity. (Contains 25 references.) (YLB)

The National Center on the Educational Quality of the Workforce (EQW) completed its first analysis of data from the EQW National Employer Survey of 4,625 establishments that was conducted in conjunction with the Census Bureau to document the practices and expectations of employers in their search for a skilled work force and that elicited 3,347 responses (72% response rate). Among the main findings of the analysis were the following: (1) restructuring of the economy has not led to a deskilling of work; (2) the use of high-performance work systems among employers still remains the exception rather than the rule; (3) virtually all establishments (97%) make some investment in formal or informal (on-the-job) training; (4) on average, establishments consider just over 80% of their workers to be fully proficient in their current jobs; (5) there is little evidence that establishments are making significant investments in remedial training or basic education; (6) although employers consider years of schools and skills certificates when making hiring decisions, they pay little attention to measurements of school performance. (Appended are tables detailing the response rates of different groups of employers and the distribution of survey sample by industry and establishment size.) (MN)

A national survey was conducted to identify employers' practices and expectations in their search for a skilled and proficient work force. Of over 4,000 employers contacted, 3,347 participated. Establishments reported that just over 80 percent of workers were fully proficient in their current jobs. Neither the restructuring of the U.S. economy nor the rapid introduction of new technologies had led to a "deskilling" of work. Use of high-performance work systems remained the exception. Almost all establishments provided formal or informal training. The most common program taught the safe use of equipment and tools. Both the improvement of teamwork efforts and customer service ranked second. Training to use computers and other new equipment ranked a close third. Fifty percent of employers used equipment suppliers or buyers to provide training. Slightly more used private consultants (36 percent) and private industry councils or other industry associations (34 percent) than they did technical or vocational institutions (33 percent) and community or junior colleges (30 percent). Attitudes, communication skills, job experience, and industry credentials ranked higher than schooling measures in hiring decisions. Policymakers should do the following: help form partnerships between school and work, make educational performance measures and credentials more meaningful to employers, and help employers reevaluate the use of educational outlets as suppliers of training. (YLB)

Training issues can be examined from at least two perspectives: the structural level (macro-level) and the micro-level. Structural issues in the delivery of training include the following: absent or uneven corporate commitment, inadequate expenditures by businesses, degrees awarded by schools that do not guarantee skill mastery, poaching of trained workers, accounting rules that require training be treated as an expense and not an investment, inadequate government funding for retraining displaced workers, need for closer employer-school ties, and need for help from organized labor. Issues in the design, delivery, and evaluation of training efforts include an emphasis on the techniques and methods of training rather than the content and little emphasis on assessment of training outcomes. Training is critical to the implementation of four competitive strategies that firms use to compete for business in the marketplace and to gain competitive advantage--speed strategy, innovation strategy, quality-enhancement strategy, and cost-reduction strategy. Certain ground rules can enhance the likelihood that organizations and individuals will benefit from training. Before training, needs analysis should be done at multiple levels. During training, the objective is to select a training technique that accurately matches demonstrated training needs and to deliver training in a manner that maximizes learning, retention, and transfer. After training, long-term effects must be evaluated. (Contains 35 endnotes.) (YLB)

Technology and international competition have transformed business practices and employment patterns. The migration of high-paying jobs from manufacturing to services, the growing importance of small firms in the U.S. economy, and the development of new technical occupations characterized by often sophisticated technologies and the absence of clearly defined career paths and status have increased the importance of the college degree in today's job market. However, college degrees cannot in themselves ensure successful lifelong careers. The biggest challenge facing higher education today is finding ways of meeting the demand for college degrees that confer genuine job skills. Whether higher education will cope with the turbulence created by labor market changes is an open question. The pessimistic scenario holds that failure to respond adequately to labor market changes will eventually weaken higher education's credential monopoly. The optimistic scenario reaffirms the importance of college degrees in an increasingly competitive labor market. Optimists argue that colleges and universities will become more adaptive and more outletlike in their approaches to questions of delivery and overhead. (MN)

Two studies tested the feasibility of a national school-to-work transition venture. One study involved focus groups of employers in eight cities to identify incentives encouraging employers to take part in youth work-based learning programs. The second involved a telephone survey of employers in seven cities who had participated in local apprenticeship or cooperative education programs regarding reasons for participation and satisfaction with the quality of students. Focus group results indicated large firms' chief concern was to recycle their current work force; they showed little interest in school-to-work transition programs. Small business owners were hiring displaced workers. Employers were critical of youth and high schools and had turned to college students and graduates for new employees. When asked about their willingness to participate in a work-based learning program, employers said screening was the pivotal concern. Employers in the second study praised the quality and contributions of young workers. The following suggestions were made to encourage employers to participate in school-to-work transition programs: defining the problem--fewer good jobs; focusing national attention by investing in work; being more flexible; making the youth labor market itself more supportive of young people's ambitions; having schools focus on work readiness; extending the concept of national service to include a strong work component; and conducting a national school-to-work transition program with effective employer organizations. (YLB)

Britain has attempted over the past decade to develop German-style youth apprenticeships through its Youth Training Scheme (YTS). YTS has the basic attributes considered essential to bridging school and work. The greatest achievement of YTS is that large numbers of employers were persuaded to provide work experience positions on short notice, and YTS was able to become a massive program very quickly. Employers have been willing to participate because the flexible and decentralized nature of the program imposes only a minor administrative burden and YTS provides help in screening new hires for entry-level jobs. The main benefit from YTS is that it helps school leavers secure permanent jobs. Unfortunately, the goal of securing jobs has conflicted with the goal of providing skills, with as many as 80 percent dropping out to take full-time employment with the employer providing the work experience. Although one goal was to help employers move toward more efficient and flexible operating systems based on higher-skill, broader jobs, YTS may actually have created incentives that retarded efforts to reform work since it provides employers with a steady stream of virtually costless new trainees. Lessons for the United States include the need for employer incentives to provide high skills and to introduce new, more flexible and efficient systems of organizing work by raising the skill levels in the work force. Appendixes include 22 footnotes. Contains 76 references. (YLB)

The old "nature versus nurture" argument has resurfaced in a new guise--the role of inherent ability or of education as the source of skill and the reason for achievement. Research shows that even one additional year of schooling raises a person's wages. Even when the relationship among education, productivity, and wages appears obvious, there is evidence for two arguments. The screening argument holds that investments in education reveal the job-relevant abilities and skills that students already possess--stopping some while allowing others to pass through the mesh. The human capital model argues that skills are acquired through investment in education, which adds to the overall volume of ability. Driving this debate is the notion of the returns provided both to the individual and society by educational attainment. However, structural changes in the economy, changes in policy, and shifts in demographics illustrate how societal trends contribute to the fluctuations in returns to education. Recommendations to find the most effective location for educational attainment include the following: developing better means of determining job-relevant abilities, encouraging business-school networks, increasing retention and educational attainment, and making educational loans and financial aid more accessible to students for whom investment in educational attainment shows real promise. (YLB)

The interrelationship between people management practices and product market/competition was examined in a series of case comparisons of pairs of firms/organizations of the following types: professional sports teams, military services, retailing firms, information service firms, business schools, financial services, shipping services, and food and beverage companies. The case comparisons suggested a clear division between companies that develop employee competencies within the firm and those that assemble employee competencies ready-made from the outside market. Those firms that developed talent from within tended to rely more on group and organizational efforts to achieve competencies, whereas those firms that hired talent from without relied more on individual efforts. A clear division was also found between organizations that compete by moving quickly and adjusting to new opportunities and firms that have developed a superior approach to a long-standing market. Organizations of the first type did not develop employee talent from within because it did not pay for them to do so. The case comparisons were concluded to support the argument that there may be no such thing as "best practice" for all employers and that, like product differentiation, distinctive human resource practices help firms compete. (MN)

Predictions of occupational growth to the year 2000 show how important the "new crafts" are becoming. Workers who possess the new crafts perform jobs that often involve sophisticated technical knowledge but are not done by people with bachelor's degrees. The growth of technical jobs in the middle of organizations threatens the familiar division between managers who hold a store of technical knowledge and workers who carry out their orders. The new technical workers need a different blend of formal education up to an associate's degree level and continuing training at work afterward. Research shows that the new crafts are growing from both above and below. Many tasks done in the past by managers and elite professionals are being handed to technical workers; low-skilled workers who had little autonomy or responsibility in their routine jobs are now analyzing and responding to data. Factors driving the growth of technical jobs are the trend toward larger and more bureaucratic corporations, expansion of science, and technological change. Changes in the workplace present enterprises with huge challenges--to change ideas about the way jobs are organized and managed. Schools face the task of preparing students for jobs that do not fit the old categories of managerial or entry-level work. Workers will have to readjust their attitudes toward education. (YLB)

Responsibility for the declining quality of the work force is evenly distributed among managers, schools, students, and the government. What is required is a new publicly sponsored partnership linking the nation's enterprises, schools, and workers. Primary responsibility for improving the quality of the work force lies with the enterprise. The firm needs to develop a flexible portfolio of worker skills, capable of quick adjustments in production aims and methods. Enterprises should be responsible for determining skill requirements and communicating those needs to educational suppliers. The nation faces a dual challenge: to prepare future workers by improving the nation's schools and to reequip the current labor force through work-related education and training. Schools need to focus more on product, less on process and to teach core competencies: mathematics, communication skills, and citizenship. The success of retraining efforts depends on the emergence of local markets that link corporate customers with educational suppliers. Too many workers lack the information and confidence to build effective skill portfolios. Individuals must be comparison shoppers for educational purchases, invest in broad-based skills for long-term payoff, and build a productive partnership with the employing firm. Public agencies must improve public schools, facilitate local market linkages, and evaluate federal funding of proprietary education. (YLB)

The research on the demand for skills in the U.S. economy is split over the issue of whether technological change has tended to increase or decrease job skill requirements. The question of whether job skill requirements have been rising is important to public policy debates concerning the skill gap, wage inequality, and the changing quality of jobs. Some researchers have attempted to use indirect measures of skill requirements, whereas others have used direct measures and have concentrated primarily on case studies. Neither approach is free of problems, however. A far better data source is job analysis. The job analysis measure developed by Hay Associates is similar to the Dictionary of Occupational Titles (DOT) measure and includes a series of variables that capture the autonomy and complexity of jobs with respect to areas such as know-how, problem solving, and accountability. The Hay technique of job analyses was used to study the changing skill requirements for production and clerical jobs. The results suggested support for highly significant skill increases in production jobs. The results for clerical jobs, on the other hand, varied significantly by function. Half the clerical jobs examined experienced significant increases in skill needs, whereas the other half experienced significant decreases. Appendices contain data on the Hay technique, a list of production job titles, and graphical analyses of eight jobs. (Contains 83 references.) (MN)

Over the past 4 decades, the number of professional and technical workers has increased by 282 percent, and economic forecasts indicate that this trend of rapid growth will increase. The bureaucratization of the professions, expansion and application of scientific knowledge, and technological change have all fueled a "technization" of the work force. The trend toward an increasingly technical work force has not only necessitated a better educated work force but has challenged the ways in which the work force and workplace are currently conceptualized and organized. The vertical division of labor that has become increasingly dominant in Western society since the beginning of the 19th century is showing signs of strain because technical occupations (referred to as the "new crafts") are becoming increasingly analytic and are requiring ever-increasing amounts of specialized education. In view of these changes, researchers associated with the Program on Technology and Work at Cornell's School of Industrial and Labor Relations have undertaken a 5-year program to build a comparative database to facilitate the development of a grounded theory of technical work. (Contains 96 references.) (MN)

Japan's economic success is clear evidence that purposeful investments in the educational quality of the work force pay major dividends in terms of enhanced productivity and increased competitiveness. The key elements of the Japanese system are, in fact, less than 40 years old. The current recession is a reminder of the transitory nature of economic trends. Within Japan, most discussions of the work force begin with the looming shortage of first-time workers and an expensive surplus of retirees. The Japanese have a relatively limited number of alternatives: increased use of female workers, greater use of older workers, increased number of guest workers, basic redistribution of workers from labor intensive sectors, and accelerated export of production jobs. The tightness of Japanese labor markets is a function of migration patterns that have yielded an economy and population increasingly concentrated in three areas: Tokyo, Osaka, and Nagoya. Side effects of educational competition include dwindling numbers of students in technical and vocational schools and increased costs of educating children that deter larger families and prolong the effects of the "baby bust." Changes for Japan may include a less rigid labor market, a shift to educational programs outside the firm, and an effort to apply the lessons of manufacturing efficiency to service sector industries. Numerous graphs and charts supplement the text. (YLB)

This paper demonstrates that production life-cycle models provide a conceptual framework to analyze systematically the interrelationships between industrial and technological change and human resources. Section II presents the life-cycle model, focusing on its implications for the types and level of employment and skill requirements in an area. Section III uses the life-cycle framework to assess the evidence on and implications of various state programs designed for the recruitment of firms, high tech job creation, and assistance to established firms. Trends in state efforts, life-cycle implications, and potential of the state strategies are discussed for each program type. Section IV provides guidelines for states in developing effective competitiveness strategies for each of three steps: state employment assessment, inventory of state resources, and strategic thinking about employment and work force needs. The final section presents conclusions that emerge from the analysis. It focuses on defensive and proactive state actions and their long-term implications as well as on evolving responsibilities in preparing a high quality work force. The states' roles in two major areas in which labor market adjustments spill beyond the boundaries of the firm are also discussed: the skill transfer process and displaced workers. (Contains 105 references.) (YLB)

State programs offer greatest promise for practical strategic actions to enhance the quality of the nation's adult work force. Three steps in the recursive process that create a model of state action are as follows: (1) documentation of the platform for action, which consists of current adult work force attributes and current institutional capacities to advance the quality of a state's labor force; (2) initial decision with respect to short-term work force quality goals; and (3) subsequent (recurring) decisions. The maturation of initiatives in two states--California and Florida--offers documentation of the instability that characterizes state efforts to address adult work force quality issues. According to the first step of the model, the state's role is to translate national demographic predictions into state-specific labor force quality implications. The goal should be to establish a combined early warning system and accessible intelligence network. An important component of the latter is an accurate inventory of current institutional capabilities. Recommendations for work force quality enhancement include the following: (1) investigate better uses of existing data systems; (2) document current institutional capacities to respond to work force needs; (3) explore the applicability of Canada's JOBSCAN concept; (4) expand the scope of reciprocal expectations from individuals and organizations receiving state benefits; (5) consider the consequences of expanding competency certification; and (6) join the Department of Defense in recommitment of military training funds to adult work force renewal. (Contains 58 bibliographic references and 60 endnotes.) (YLB)

Establishment of a national-state system of world-class occupational skill standards is a first step in restructuring adult vocational-technical education and job training programs. Occupational skills standards provide the necessary foundation for addressing three major state policy issues: the state's proper role in private work-based training, improved effectiveness and efficiency of public programs, and development of a public-private credentialing system that promotes worker mobility. The German Dual System has been proposed as a model for transforming the vocational education and job training system in the United States. As shown by the Illinois Manufacturing Tech Prep Project, development of national skill standards should be based on certain assumptions about the role and structure of skill standards in state work force preparation programs: development of world-class standards, need for basic enabling skills and independent role performance, standards based on federal-state labor market policies, state education goals and implementation of applied academics, and skill assessment and credentialing. A national-state system of occupational skill standards can be constructed by building the following national-state systems: industry skill corporations, training occupations, occupational skill standards, professional and technical credentials, performance standards systems, and regulatory policies for public and private training providers. Appendices include three figures and sample skill standards from the Illinois Tech Prep Project. (Contains 38 references.) (YLB)

Although most people agree that not enough entry workers possess the skills required for success in the workplace, few individuals are able to articulate clearly why and where the skills gap occurs. Despite the popularity of blaming schools and curricula, little hard evidence exists to support the claim that U.S. secondary school performance is declining relative to its standing in recent decades. Research studies focusing on enterprises, schools, and workers have established the following: (1) employees consistently identify deficits in employees' behavioral skills as the primary cause of poor job performance; (2) efforts to bolster students' academic skills through high school reform are worthwhile, but it must be remembered that education must impart more than basic skills; and (3) the workplace rewards workers who possess work-related behavioral skills and attitudes. Educational legislation and policy must address these concerns through the following actions: (1) encourage the fostering of behavioral skills through legislation focusing on the connection between school and work; (2) use work-based learning programs and appropriate classroom techniques to foster development of attitudes and behaviors that translate well in work environments; and (3) investigate which work-related attitudes and behaviors are most important for success in the workplace. (MN)