By now most corporations recognize that the United States is facing a skills gap. Yet there are still some people who refuse to believe the skills gap exists. While it’s tempting to claim that these skills gap deniers have some political agenda that can only succeed if the skills gap is proven false, the reality is that most people who don’t believe in the skills gap are looking at the problem too narrowly.
The disagreement is understandable. Read a dozen articles on the skills gap and you’ll come away with at least six definitions of what the skills gap is. Some don’t even bother to define it, assuming a clear, shared understanding that simply doesn’t exist.
To avoid that stumbling block, here is a definition to work from: the term skills gap defines the mismatch between the skills employers want employees to have and what applicants are actually able to do.