Not enough Workers?

I received a mailer from the Washington State Workforce Training and Education Coordinating Board today. Here are the main points:

"The demand for new workers in Washington with between one and four years of postsecondary education or training is expected to reach 28,600 in 2007 and 29,700 in 2010.

The current supply...will only meet 82.5% of that demand in 2007 and 79.5% in 2010.

To close the gap completely by 2010, the state will need more than 22,400 additional FTEs."

This report strikes me as counter to everything we have been hearing about employment projections. I'm sure this is the case in other states, but here in Washington, the number of highly qualified people looking for work is staggering. The last several jobs I helped recruit for were filled with overqualified people - the selection of candidates was outstanding (too much so to be healthy).

Do they not count any of the folks who are not currenly in the workforce? Are they taking into account that some jobs will surely be lost to outsourcing?

I am guessing the purpose of this mailer is to generate support for state and federal retraining programs. While I fully support these programs and efforts, I can't help but wonder if we should not be focusing MORE energy and resources toward building the small and medium sized businesses who will generate the bulk of new American jobs in the future. We should be enlivening entrepreneuralism!

Managers have to make tough decisions about which projects get resourced and which are dropped - the best managers do this more often. We should hold our elected officials to the same expectation.

All this makes Tom Peters' post even more thought provoking.

The better we get at making tough decisions in business, the better our decisions will be in government. As the global workplace develops, so too must our abilities to manage well within the new paradigms.

What do you think?