Photo by Kang Wans
Expanding work-based learning and investing in upskilling.
Economic data illustrate the President Trump administration concerns and solutions regarding labor underutilization, entry-level scarcity and worker skill mismatches.
The U.S. had 7.3 million unfilled job openings in July 2026. It reflected a stable job opening rate of 4.4 percent according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
President Trump’s strategy is focusing on expanding trade apprenticeships, skills-based federal hiring reforms, and reducing the total headcount of the federal bureaucracy.
So meantime an innovative solution has been unveiled to solve a big economic conundrum. The conundrum: A big schism exists between what employers need in worker skills but millions of people either can’t get a family wage job and or work a full 40-hour work week.
Even though the unemployment rate has dropped in the second Trump economy after the disastrous Biden presidency, employers complain they have unfilled jobs because of a huge skills-gap among job seekers.
In addition, the average American workweek is only 34.4 hours. Underemployment is a chronic problem for Millennials and seasoned workers.
Underemployment exists when a worker has a job, but his or her work hours and/or pay levels are too low.
To be sure, lack of education plays an important role. But even college-educated workers are suffering. Many had the wrong majors that won’t lead to good jobs. A college degree is not a guarantee of career success. Millennials have been learning they need to be flexible and strategic in their choices.
3 issues for employers
The Business Roundtable, an association of chief executive officers of top U.S. companies, reported many jobs go unfilled because workers lack skills needed for the 21st century.
As it is, the roundtable-member companies employ 15 million workers and have $6 trillion in annual revenue.
“As employers, we know that America’s economic growth is directly linked to the skills of today’s workers. Unfortunately, the skills of many job applicants and existing employees have not kept up with the requirements of current and future jobs,” said Wes Bush, former chief executive officer and president of Northrop Grumman Corporation and Chair of the Business Roundtable Education and Workforce Committee.
In a press release, the roundtable cited employers’ three challenges:
- A lack of individuals with fundamental “employability skills,” such as the ability to use basic math, communicate effectively, read technical manuals, work successfully in teams and participate in complex problem-solving. Seventy-five percent of responding CEOs indicated that fundamental math, reading and writing skills are important. Fifty percent of them are having difficulty finding qualified applicants with these skills.
- A lack of workers who have the specialized skills needed to fill many trade positions. Forty-four percent of responding CEOs expressed difficulty finding qualified candidates for at least one skilled trade occupation.
- A lack of applicants with the science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) skills needed for many of today’s jobs. Cybersecurity, data science, robotics, software and computer science engineers were among the most difficult positions to fill with qualified candidates.
Economic solution
To combat the underemployment issue, the Trump Administration is pushing to create millions of new jobs.
President Trump is employing a tactic in which he succeeded as a reality TV star and real estate magnate – he’s embarked on a campaign to create apprenticeships.
Administration officials argue that the U.S. economy does not necessarily need job openings. Instead, the administration is working to reshape the quality of the workforce, and in traing workers to work in manufacturing and other critical sectors.
How?
He is encouraging workforce training partnerships between among companies and schools. That includes programs in which Americans learn skills from seasoned workers while earning a paycheck.
But he’ll do it without spending vast sums of taxpayer dollars. He’s pushing for effective training programs and for the private sector to create apprenticeships.
Primary pillars of the Trump initiatives:
1. Federal workforce reforms in the government’s outdated hiring system include removing degrees.
2. Emphasizing skills over college degrees involve rewriting job descriptions so that hiring decisionmakers can hire from formal tests and practical competence.
3. Job titles are being consolidated to reduce the number of federal job titles by 25 percent. This will eliminate countless obsolete job description and is expected to make it easier to match job applicants with crucial vacancies.
4. Government employment rolls have been reduced by layoffs and employee buyout programs. This has been designed to encourage the former civil-service employees to fill the vacancies in manufacturing and other sectors.
5. The Department of Labor is targeting specialized and technical occupations. The president issued an executive order to set a nationwide goal of one million apprentices to bypass university debts and smooth the way for them into different careers. The strategy includes hundreds of millions of dollars in grants for training programs especially in national defense, nuclear energy and shipbuilding.
6. The apprenticeships include artificial intelligence training.
7. The Administration is replacing H-1B visa lottery with a wage-weighting mechanism for foreign applicants to solve the gaps in the corporate and technology sectors.
The Trump Administration initiatives sound pretty good. It works for me.
From the Coach’s Corner, here are related public policy solutions:
Why President Trump’s Growth Budget, Reforms Matter — Deficit-spending and the resulting massive debt severely damages America’s economic prospects and hurts each American. But a disciplined approach will make America great again — by shrinking the national debt and implementing other needed reforms.
No Thanks to Bad Policy and Journalists, Economic Handcuffs Coming Off — By removing handcuffs on the nation’s economy, it will continue its strong growth if we capitalize on lessons in common-sense economic-growth policies from two late presidents.
“Do what you love to do and give it your very best. Whether it’s business or baseball, or the theater, or any field. If you don’t love what you’re doing and you can’t give it your best, get out of it. Life is too short.”
-Al Lopez
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