The Reindustrialization of the United States: Implications for Vocational Education Research and Development. Occasional Paper No. 71.

Reindustrialization problems in the United States (U.S.) include unemployment, low productivity, inflation, and inadequate economic growth. To determine how to improve economic performance, a careful, rational evaluation must be made of such factors as tax policy, spirit of risk, managerial effectiveness, rates of innovation, research and development, and human resource training and education as they apply to industry. Unlike Japan and countries in Western Europe, the U.S. does not understand the need to invest in major training and education efforts to service the skill needs of private and public sectors. Neither is there evidence of an awareness of the key relationship between the inadequate investment in human resources and problems of inflation and productivity. The Japanese human resource investment approach--life-long employment with continuous retraining of all employees--has major implications for some U.S. labor force problems. To move toward a really modern labor force, the U.S. should rethink the decision to change the definition of acceptable levels of unemployment and consider the experiences of other major industrial countries. Vocational education researchers should evaluate the human resources-capital investment programs in Japan and West Germany and determine how such approaches can be adapted in U.S. industry. (YLB)