Skilled Workers Getting Easier To Find

The quarterly business conditions survey from The National Association for Business Economics (NABE) was largely upbeat. Among the  findings: In the second quarter of 2014, only 22 percent of respondents reported facing a shortage of skilled workers, down significantly from the second quarter of last year, when the figure was 33 percent. In its coverage of the NABE report, The Fiscal Times notes that the unemployment rate also has dropped significantly, from 7.5 percent at this time last year to 6.1 percent. While at first glance that drop makes the findings regarding greater skilled worker availability hard to explain, another fact also weighs on the issue: Wages are up. The second quarter of 2014 was the third straight quarter in which there was an increase in the percent of respondents reporting that they had raised them.