This part of the unemployment problem is not often talked about

Last week I wrote a post about how hard it was for southern farmers to find Americans willing and able to do field work.  Here are excerpts from a similar story, but this time it comes from the far north (Minnesota), and involves skilled work, not field work.

At a daylong jobs summit convened by Gov. Mark Dayton on Tuesday, frustrated business leaders gathered from all parts of the state to say they have hundreds of openings but can't find workers qualified to fill them. The skills gap persists even in the face of a state unemployment rate that stubbornly hangs around 7 percent...

As businesses adapt to a shifting economy, they leave behind a glut of unemployed workers from waning industries who are not qualified for the new jobs being created. Those workers increasingly can't afford or don't want to relocate and retraining can be expensive and out of reach.

Nathan Johnson, an administrator with Pioneer Care nursing home in Fergus Falls, said he could hire 15 licensed nurses today -- 40 percent of Pioneer's available nursing shifts, but he can't find qualified nurses...

Many of the unfilled jobs are in health care, but more are in vocational fields such as welding, metal work and precision machining, where jobs paying $20 an hour or more go unfilled.

Traci Tapani's metal fabrication company, Wyoming Machine in Stacy, recently published a job opening at what she thought was an attractive annual wage of $36,000.  Four weeks went by without a single applicant...

Some of the disconnect may stem from what business managers and even some educators say are overwhelming cultural and parental pressures to push children into a traditional liberal arts education where they can pursue white-collar professions...

"We need to start talking to our kids about these other jobs..."

Some of the best and brightest students I ever taught were not at a university, but rather at a technical college.  And I will guarantee that those guys and gals are thriving at high-pay jobs right now.