Education and massive layoffs

I completed my capstone on this topic. In the next few blogs, I will insert the parts of the capstone.

Introduction
Over the last ten years, from 1999 to 2009 the United States has experienced a dramatic shift in the types of jobs that pay high wages and the continued decline in the demand for unskilled low wage labor. Many tasks have been relegated to robotics and other mechanical production equipment to improve quality and reduce costs. Advanced technology is giving rise to the mechanization of any task that is repetitive or that can be reduced to an algorithm in the manufacturing process. Computerization has created an increasing demand for higher skilled workers at a time when our educational system is producing fewer qualified individuals (Florida, 2005) to fill those positions.
The myth that most parents believe is that a college education for their children is the top priority and that jobs in the trades are left for the educational failures (Gordon, 2000). Yet even with this erroneous perception that most children will graduate from college, the facts are only eighteen of one hundred students who were ninth graders, in 2007, will earn a degree by age twenty-five (NCEE, 2007). Obviously this means that 82 out of 100 high school students do not attain a degree by age twenty-five. Is this a measure of success in a globally competitive world?
This outcome has remained consistent for a generation or more. The result is that less skilled people are entering the workforce at a time when the skill demands by business are increasing for the jobs in the hiring pipeline. Demographics are also working against both the United States and the other major industrialized countries in that the generations succeeding the baby boomers are fewer in number and unable to fill the impending vacancies (Dychtwald, Erickson, & Morrison, 2006). In fact, the turnover from experienced professionals to inexperienced entry level workers has created a knowledge shortage (DeLong, 2004), and that will have a detrimental effect on the potential for business to operate at peak efficiency. This is a serious concern as we enter 2010 and hopefully an economic turnaround.