United States is NOT a literacy superpower

A recently released report makes it very clear that U.S. workers don't just lack job skills. The ProLiteracy President's State of Adult Literacy 2006 report, based on the survey released in December 2005 by the U.S. Commissioner of Education Statistics, spells out a very bleak forecast for employers hoping those dark Perfect Labor Storm clouds will just blow by.

Each day ninety-nine percent of all workers perform some reading-related work. The amount of information the average adult in the U.S. is exposed to daily has increased exponentially in the past 50 years. We multitask at work and at home; television news "crawls" across our screens 24-7. Text messages about world news, financial markets, sporting event scores and even the weather alert us all day - and night - long.

But nearly half the population can barely read. According to the 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL) study with results released in December 2005, only 13 percent of this country's adults have English reading and comprehension skills considered to be "proficient." This means that after reading a pamphlet about the dangers of high blood pressure that refers to the disease as "the silent killer," 87 percent of U.S. adults could not answer correctly the question, "According to the brochure, why is it difficult for people to know if they have high blood pressure?"

Even more astonishing are the 11 million adults in the U.S. identified as "nonliterate in English," with skills so low that these individuals could not understand enough English to take part in the assessment. Another 29 percent have just the basic skills to complete everyday tasks, as long as the reading is short and the complexity is simple. Far too many workers cannot read and understand a newspaper article written at an eighth grade reading level or complete the type of math problem that is taught in the fourth grade.

With employers scrambling to find skilled workers, the pool of qualified candidates shrinks exponentially when nearly half the population is functionally illiterate.

The U.S. claim that they are the breeding ground for the world's best and brightest is nearly empty. The U.S. outperforms only Italy in literacy and numeracy, falling behind Norway, Bermuda, Switzerland, and Canada in both skill areas.

Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the 2003 International Adult Literacy and Lifeskills Survey (ALL).

The only face the U.S. can save for this indictment on our society is that we're not alone. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) estimates that there are 771 million illiterate adults in the world-one-fifth of the world's adult population does not have "the ability to read and write, with understanding, a short, simple sentence about one's everyday life."

More literacy facts according to The Literacy Company and Evelyn Wood Reading Dynamics:

More than 20 percent of adults read at or below the fifth grade level; this is well below what they need to earn a living wage.
Forty-four million American adults are poor readers or "functionally illiterate."
Twenty-one million American adults can't read at all; one-fifth of high school graduates can't read their diplomas.
One-third of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives.
Forty-two percent of college graduates never read another book.
Seventy percent of Americans haven't visited a bookstore in five or more years.
One of the largest and fastest growing groups of young people in the U.S. is dropouts. In the United States the annual high school dropout rate hovers at 34 percent.

More about the Perfect Labor Storm below.

Demographic realities are creating a real war for talent in the military. Army statistics show that only three of 10 men and women aged 17 to 24 are fully qualified to join the military due to obesity, failing grades, or trouble with the law: 2.3 million qualify for medical or misdemeanor waivers, 2.6 million disqualify due to medical problems, and 4.6 million are disqualified for criminal history, obesity and dependents.

When you look at the number of candidates between the ages of 17 and 24, that's approximately 35 million people. Based on the army's moral, ethical, educational and physical standards, that leaves 4.5 million qualfied for service. Narrow that pool to those who score well on the military's entrance tests or who have some college educations and the number of qualified recruits drops to 1.5 million.

1.5 million - this is the same pool that colleges, employers and the military are going after.

Perfect Labor Storm 2.0 is now available. The year 2007 will see an increase in skilled worker shortages and more competition. The result will be higher salaries, more training and career advancement opportunities, and more flexible work cultures. How prepared is your company to find skilled and dependable workers?

Perfect Labor Storm 2.0 is the newly updated and revised 2007 edition of best-selling book first published in 2005. You can now download an advance copy of PLS 2.0. a $10 value with every purchase of the original Perfect Labor Storm, still a great value at $9.95. Order your copy today!

DISC assessments, like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), are considered ipsative tests. Like the hundreds of other assessments based on the four style behavioral model, these ipsative tests are very accurate at predicting preferred behavioral styles. They do not however reliably predict job competence or skill potential, a requirement of any selection assessment.

Ipsative tests are very effective when used for developmental, coaching, team building and interpersonal conflict resolution. On the other hand, ipsative types of test should not normally be used in recruitment and selection as the exclusive assessment. There is also the danger of eliminating high potential candidates when using DISC as the primary tool. DISC results might disqualify a candidate who doesn't have the "right" behavioral fit although they might have a strong personality fit as well as desirable competencies.

For selection and succession planning, it is recommended businesses use normative testing. Normative tests such as JobClues, ASSESS or Prevue, generally has a higher validity than ipsative tests like DISC. Normative tests, unlike ipsative tests, measure quantifiable personality characteristics on individual scales. Depending on the instrument used the predictive or criterion validity can be 70 percent or higher depending on the assessment and the job.

Success Performance Solutions offers both ipsative and normative testing. DISC and Business Values and Motivators are considered ipsative while Prevue (TotalView), ASSESS, and Clues are normative.

4. Just announced! Perfect Labor Storm 2.0 (soft and hard cover versions) release set for October 2007. Did you know?

Trends and stats like this are just an inkling of the information you'll find in the revised, updated and expanded Perfect Labor Storm 2.0, including several chapters about managing generational clashes. Keep reading future issues of this newsletter for more announcements about the book release and updated Perfect Storm Indicators.

To order Perfect Labor Storm e-book published earlier this year, you can order a download copy of PLS, a great value at $9.95.

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The Pennsylvania Chamber Foundation invites you to a free public service roundtable "Help Wanted: The Skilled Worker And Business Leader Shortage Crisis", from 8 a.m. to noon Tuesday, July 31, 2007 at the Holiday Inn Harrisburg-Hershey, Grantville, PA. Ira S Wolfe will open the event with an update on The Perfect Labor Storm.

Designed for presidents, business owners, HR professionals, supervisors, department heads and other business executives who hire in Pennsylvania, in addition to local chamber executives and state
association executives, this event will provide practical, concrete advice on how the business community can cope with the current and anticipated shortage of qualified, skilled employees and business leaders.

8. Quotes from Hire Authorities

"We are about to face a demographically driven shortfall in labor that will make the late 1990's seem like a minor irritation."
Anthony Carnevale, Former Chairman of the National Commission for Employment Policy

Permission is granted to consultants, managers, business owners and HR professionals to reproduce content from this newsletter for your internal publications, or to distribute copies to your workforce, on the condition that you reproduce the credits and contact information as follows: "Reprinted with permission from Ira S Wolfe and Success Performance Solutions. Copyright 2007 Ira S Wolfe." We also hope you will forward the newsletter in its entirety and recommend to others that they subscribe.