Help power Marketplace this winter when you support the show today. Donate Now!

Obama’s new labor secretary wants to work with colleges

Kai Ryssdal Aug 30, 2013
HTML EMBED:
COPY

Obama’s new labor secretary wants to work with colleges

Kai Ryssdal Aug 30, 2013
HTML EMBED:
COPY

Thomas Perez was confirmed as U.S. Labor Secretary about six weeks ago. Job growth has been slow, and unemployment levels remain stagnant around 7.4 percent.

“I speak to a lot of business owners who are trying to hire,” Perez says. “They want to hire, and the most frequent thing I hear from them is ‘all too many people come in through the door don’t have the skills necessary to do the job that I need to do.’

Last month, the U.S. economy added about 160,000 jobs to the workforce.

“I think that the economy is slowly and steadily growing, but I think the preisdent is the first person that’ll tell you that we need to do more. We have to pick up the pace,” says Perez. “There is so much more that can be done to grow the economy, including passing immigration reform, including investing in skills, including investnig in infrastructure.”

Perez adds:

“We talk a lot about the budget deficit, and I’ll note that the budget deficit has been going down in the past 12 months significantly. But [what] we also have to do is talk about the skills deficit. We have to make sure that [for] the jobs of tomorrow, that people have the skills to do them. I think the Department of Labor can play a critically-important role as the quarterback of a demand-driven, very nimble workforce development system, where we work with community colleges, with employers, to understand what their needs are, and to help train workers. If you look at industrialized nations across the globe, we are near the bottom in terms of the public-sector investment in skills. As we’re going to compete in the global economy, we need to understand that context.”

There’s a lot happening in the world.  Through it all, Marketplace is here for you. 

You rely on Marketplace to break down the world’s events and tell you how it affects you in a fact-based, approachable way. We rely on your financial support to keep making that possible. 

Your donation today powers the independent journalism that you rely on. For just $5/month, you can help sustain Marketplace so we can keep reporting on the things that matter to you.