Worldwide, it is estimated that 69 percent of employers reported having difficulty recruiting the qualified workers they are looking for. At the same time, many countries still face high unemployment.

Besides the economic recessions in different regions, the situation was made worse by the fact that many corporations simply stopped training their people. In misguided attempts to reduce expenses, countless organizations literally eliminated their training functions.

However, as we have highlighted in this publication so often, the real problem is that most countries are just failing to produce workers with the right skills---especially the United States.
 
In the US alone, more than 30 million people are unemployed, under-employed, or have given up looking for a job. As we forecast in our book titled "Impending Crisis: Too Many Jobs, Too Few People", there is already a workforce crisis in the US. This crisis is most acute in four industries: Healthcare, Information Technology (IT), Aerospace, and Manufacturing. 
 
Highlighted by Dr. Edward Gordon in his new book "Future Jobs: Solving the Employment and Skills Crisis" (and picked up in a recent newsletter by AudioTech Book Summaries), these four industries are feeling/will feel the most pain now and moving into the near-term future.
 
Healthcare. We currently have urgent needs for doctors, nurses, pharmacists, lab technicians, therapists, dentists, "and just about anyone who is trained in a broad array of healthcare occupations to cope with a rapidly aging population". "The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that by 2020, jobs in this field will grow by over 20 percent."
 
IT: The War for Talent is alive and well across the IT sector. Between 2010 and 2011, the sector created over 80,000 new IT jobs. In 2011, CareerBuilder.com posted 30,000 open tech jobs. The problem: many of these positions, required specialized skills of five or more years of IT experience. Gartner, a technology research company, expects 1.9 million IT jobs to be created in the US alone between 2012 and 2015.
 
Aerospace. According to Boeing's top executive, "Many seasoned and skilled workers are close to retiring, and insufficient numbers of capable workers are being prepared to replace them." In fact, by 2015, 60,000 employees, or 40 percent of its workforce, may be gone. Already, Boeing is suffering from a record order backlog.
 
Manufacturing. A Boston Consulting Group study warns that by the end of the decade, this shortage in 2011 of 600,000 could rise to over 875,000 highly skilled US workers.
 
What is needed is major investment in the training and development of our global workforce. Corporations and governments alike need to take notice, but more important, take major action—and take it quickly. If corporations and countries are to flourish in the future, this investment is not optional. Those that ignore this important obligation will ultimately find themselves out of business or bankrupt.

Special thanks to AudioTech Book Summaries and Edward Gordon, author of "Future Jobs: Solving the Employment and Skills Crisis" for this valuable information.

© Copyright 1998-2014 by The Herman Group of Companies, Inc., all rights reserved. From 'The Herman Trend Alert,' by Joyce Gioia, Strategic Business Futurist. (800) 227-3566 or www.hermangroup.com

The Herman Trend Alert is a trademark of The Herman Group of Companies, Inc. Reprinted with permission.