[PEN-L:3777] Training's not the answer

[D Shniad <shniad@xxxxxx>]

An interesting article entitled "The training wheels of government go flat"
from The Economist was reprinted in the April 13 edition of The Globe and
Mail.  The headline is misleading because it gives the impression that this is
merely an argument against government-sponsored training in particular.
The  body of the article cites a variety of surveys showing what many of us
have believed all along -- that generic training is simply not relevant to
what ails in employment markets.

(For the record, while I agree with the article's analysis of the inadequacy of
training as a response to the jobs crisis, I disagree with The Economist's
suggested cure -- deregulated labour markets, lower wages, etc.)

Sid Shniad

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Highlights:

"All in all, the case for publicly supported [training] schemes seems solid.
There is just one problem.  In practice, they rarely work."

"In the United States, the Department of Labour runs $5 billion worth of
elaborate training schemes directed at the disadvantaged.  How much do
they help their clientele?  "Zero is not a bad number," concludes James
Heckman of the University of Chicago, who directed a government-
financed study of the Job Training Partnership Act, America's largest such
program."

".... In a paper for the London-based Employment Policy Institute, Peter
Robinson of the London School of Economics argues that, after accounting
for 'deadweight' (programs helping those who would have found jobs
anyway) and 'substitution' (finding work at other people's expense), hardly
any benefit remains from Britain's training schemes."

".... of five Australian training programs studied during 1989-92, only one
could report that at least half of its participants were either working or
studying three months after completion.  Nevertheless, Australia is now
investing about $7.8 billion (U.S.) over four years in job training."

"... The OECD reported research that evaluated four German programs.  Its
conclusion: 'No type of training was found to have any significant impact
on the flows out of either short- or long-term unemployment, nor on the
flows into unemployment."

"... schemes such as this, by their nature, cannot hope to have more than a
marginal impact on unemployment."