Bridging the Middle-Skills Gap

Business leaders must lead efforts to close the skills gap, according to a new report from Accenture, Burning Glass Technologies and Harvard Business School. The report focuses on the demand for "middle-skills" jobs, which require more education and training than a high-school diploma but less than a four-year degree. It argues that businesses "must champion an employer-led skills-development system, in which they bring the type of rigor and discipline to sourcing middle-skills talent that they historically applied to their materials supply chains." Educators and policy makers also have roles to play in fixing the problem, which the report said is urgent.