Mr. Michael J. Handel

• 
  www.vdare.com/rubenstein/051110_nd.htm - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 11/10/2005    Last Visited: 7/19/2009  

  But University of Wisconsin sociologist Michael J. Handel begs to disagree. In his new book Worker Skills and Job Requirements: Is There a Mismatch? , he offers proof that American workers are as competent as those in other advanced nations.

• 
  www.vdare.com/rubenstein/051110_nd.htm - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 11/10/2005    Last Visited: 11/16/2007  

  But University of Wisconsin sociologist Michael J. Handel begs to disagree.In his new book Worker Skills and Job Requirements: Is There a Mismatch?, he offers proof that American workers are as competent as those in other advanced nations.

• 
  www.nwboard.org/NAWB/NAWBbriefOct272005.htm - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 10/27/2005    Last Visited: 10/31/2009  

  Conversely, sociologist Michael Handel, in a book just released by the Economic Policy Institute titled Worker Skills and Job Requirements: Is There a Mismatch?, argues that these claims of large-scale and widening skills gap are overstated, and states that younger workers appear to have higher cognitive skills than older workers.

• 
  www.epi.org/content.cfm/books_howmuch - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 5/1/2000    Last Visited: 12/9/2007  

  Michael J. Handel
  
  RELATED PUBLICATIONS
  ...
  by Michael Handel

• 
  American Sociological Association | 2006... - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 6/2/2006    Last Visited: 7/8/2006  

  Michael Handel,University of Wisconsin, Madison (Critic)

• 
  Bradenton Herald | 11/23/2005 | Manufacturers say they... - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 11/23/2005    Last Visited: 11/23/2005  

  Michael Handel, a sociologist at Northeastern University in Boston who specializes in worker skills, said complaints about employability go back decades.
  
  "The people who were complained about 25 years ago in 'A Nation at Risk,' a government white paper about declining education, are now the people doing the complaining," he said.
  
  Another factor is the decline in unions, which offered apprenticeships, he said.

• 
  Cool Tools - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 4/18/2005    Last Visited: 9/2/2006  

  In a new study from the Economic Policy Institute, Michael J. Handel of the University of Wisconsin takes a hard look at the evidence and finds it's an open question whether the mismatch even exists.Paperback, $12.50.Available from the Economic Policy Institute.

• 
  December 2004 - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 12/1/2004    Last Visited: 3/9/2009  

  The issue is "much talked about and poorly understood," says Michael Handel, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.
  ...
  "A lot of the mission of education resists commercialization," Mr. Handel says.

• 
  FWHRMA | Newsletter | November 2005 - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 11/1/2005    Last Visited: 2/23/2006  

  But there is little evidence of a large or growing gap between employers' demand for skilled workers and their supply, said Michael J. Handel, author of the new study, Worker Skills and Job Requirements: Is There a Mismatch?
  
  "In fact, the very existence of a skills mismatch or skills shortage may be in doubt and is by no means as obvious as often asserted," writes Handel, assistant sociology professor at Northeastern University in Boston.
  
  The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) funded the study, which Handel conducted while he was a professor at the University of Wisconsin.
  ...
  Employers complain about the skills of young and high school-educated workers, "but it is unclear whether they are dissatisfied mainly with workers' cognitive skills or rather with their effort and attitude," Handel writes.
  
  A lack of computer and other high-level skills is not often cited by employers.However, when the complaint is raised, it is directed at older workers and even then the focus is on an unwillingness to change and inflexibility, he noted.
  
  "There is a lot of unneeded hand-wringing and blame-shifting" over the so-called skills gap, he told HR News."Keep it in perspective.Don't believe the hype."
  
  While Handel is not alone in his assessment, others see the situationdifferently.
  ...
  manufacturing go begging, Handel told HR News.Skilled craft workers, for example, have been in demand for 30 years, he said.A lot of employees don't want to do blue-collar work, he said , a fact NAM also noted.In addition, manufacturers may move to nonunion areas to save on costs, but a lack of unions can mean a lack of apprenticeships and workers with the needed skills, he said.
  
  "There are real problems with people's work readiness at all levels," Handel said.
  ...
  Occupations requiring "lower order skills such as sales, clerical, service and laborers" have grown more slowly or have shrunk, Handel said.
  
  "It may not be a complete myth that America has some skills issues," he said in an EPI press release, "but there is a forest of contrary evidence, caveats and open questions that has gone largely unrecognized in the focus on a few fairly isolated trees."
  
  What is needed, Handel writes, is a common set of measures for worker skills and job skill requirements.He has started a multiyear survey funded by the National Science Foundation, examining specific skills U.S. workers use on their jobs.

• 
  KCTCS Today's News - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 5/24/2006    Last Visited: 7/10/2006  

  But Michael J. Handel, an associate professor of sociology at Northeastern University in Boston, noted that while employers complain about the skills of young and high-school-educated workers, "it is unclear whether they are dissatisfied mainly with workers' cognitive skills or rather with their effort and attitude."
  ...
  Mr. Handel of Northeastern University said that suggests the problem may be one of maturity, not a more general lack of skills.
  
  When it comes to reliable data on workforce competencies and job demands, said Mr. Handel of Northeastern, "there isn't a lot of hard data on most of these issues."
  
  The author of a 2005 book, Worker Skills and Job Requirements: Is There a Mismatch?, Mr. Handel just completed a nationally representative survey of wage and salary workers to find out what types of reading, writing, math, problem-solving, technology, and interpersonal skills they actually use on the job.
  
  His goal: to "get some real hard data and numbers on what has really been a very soft debate."

Page:  1 2 3