Education and Job Requirements: The Great Mismatch

For a person to get a job, there must be a job opening. Call that Step One. Step Two is that the person seeking said job has the requirements to actually do that job. For many U.S. metropolitan areas, Step Two is the hard part.

There are job openings in the U.S. But the people living near those jobs don't have the relevant education or training to get them, according to a new report out today from the Brookings Institution. The report looks at education, job openings and unemployment in the 100 largest metropolitan areas in the U.S. between January 2006 and February 2012 and finds that the overall unemployment picture in metro areas gets a lot worse when the workforce's educational background doesn't match up with the requirements of employers.