FOR MANY years now, Dennis Redovich and I have been screaming about what we might call the high-skills hoax--the notion that everyone must have high skills. Redovich runs the Center for the Study of Education and Jobs in Wisconsin and the U.S. It's not that we don't recognize a civil rights issue in the debate--everyone should have the opportunity to develop the skills to land a high-paying job. However, we understand the law of supply and demand, and we know about what jobs are actually being created. In fact, if everyone became highly skilled, the wages of skilled labor would fall, and the unemployment rates for skilled workers would rise, a condition conducive to social unrest. Most new jobs, though, continue to be in the low-paying service sector. When the Bureau of Labor Statistics issues its 10-year job creation forecasts, the number of new jobs for retail sales clerks alone approaches the number for the 10 fastest-growing jobs combined. At present, the number of people with bachelor's degrees is just about right to fill the proportion of jobs requiring them, and that proportion is not projected to increase much in the near future. Producing a great many more college grads will ... well, here we are again, back to supply and demand. Parallel to the claim that we will need more skilled workers is the claim that there is a mismatch between jobs and the skills of workers: workers don't have the skills that employers demand. have argued against this, too. To date, our laments have gone for naught, but now we are joined by two well-known researchers at two well-known organizations: Paul Barton of ETS and Michael Handel of the Economic Policy Institute. Maybe now someone will take notice. Barton put together a summary monograph, High School Reform and Work: Facing Labor Market Realities, while Handel penned a small book, Worker Skills and Job Requirements: Is There a Mismatch? Indeed, there is a mismatch between young workers and what employers want: the workers are young, and employers don't want young people. Those who conducted one study using employer focus groups concluded, We were surprised at just how much animosity there is toward young people in the employer community. In the focus groups the response was almost scatological. To ameliorate this situation, we must find a means to get around Hodgkinson's Law of Demographics, which I just named for demographer Harold Hodgkinson. Hodgkinson observes that 10 years from now everyone will be exactly 10 years older. need to find a way to grow 26-year-olds in 18 years. (Twenty-six is about when young people with high diplomas are old enough to be hired into jobs that might eventually pay a living wage--itself not a precise statistic.) Says Barton, Employers, other than those in industries that rely heavily on teenagers, do not want to hire high graduates until are well into their 20s, irrespective of how well do in high school (emphasis in original). My guess is that the teen-laden businesses don't want to hire them either but have no choice. The skills deficit of young workers is often presented as a cohort effect: it is today's youths who are found particularly wanting. (The first Bracey Report in 1991 actually carried the title Why Can't They Be Like Were? This was a lyric from the 1960 musical Bye Bye Birdie: Why can't be like we were, perfect in every way? Oh, what's the matter with kids today?) Handel and Barton see it instead as an age effect. Handel observes that employers have been complaining about young workers for decades but that the complaints don't follow the kids into adulthood. As workers age and shoulder more adult responsibilities, Handel says, they grow out of casual work attitudes and adjust to--or are socialized into [conditioned into? brainwashed into?]--the workplace norms of the jobs consider worth keeping. It's worth noting here that the quintessential mediocrities in this nation were members of the senior class of 1983. …