US Labor Market: Do workers meet the needs of Employers

The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco (FRBSF) has been working to better understand how the current pace of the jobs recovery is affected by the mismatch between jobseekers’ skills and the needs of the employer. For Federal Reserve policymakers, skill mismatches will affect how quickly the labor market can recover from a recession, the rate of unemployment that the economy can sustain.

In November of 2011, the FRBSF held a conference, “Creating and Employing a Skilled Work Force: Challenges and Opportunities”, to examine workforce skills and their relationship to job openings. The findings, summarized for the public on this past April, suggest that good jobs are still available in growing sectors for workers of all skill levels.