Ladies and Gentlemen, America's unemployment levels are due to a giant skills mismatch problem.

[MANative]

2. And as a former corporate Learning and Development executive, I can tell you...

...without a single doubt that you have hit the nail on the head. About a dozen years ago, coinciding with the rise of the Bush/Neocon/Insane Repub era, corporate training programs started to go the way of the dinosaur. All developmental work was slashed in favor of basic computer training and functional (job specific) skills training.

What the vast majority of corporate "leaders" don't understand is that "management" skill is not taught in MBA programs, certainly not to the extent that is required to manage a workgroup or improve one's leadership ability. MBAs teach about "business" skill - very, very different from "management" skill. The way people have learned the nuances of these skills is through developmental opportunities and guided learning. They are not inherent skill for most people. Sadly, most supervisors simply emulate the management style of their own boss, and the less specific knowledge that they gain along the way, the more likely they will not recognize the mistakes, thus being doomed to repeat them, and in the absence of new learning for themselves and their own subordinates, thus perpetuating the problem.

I headed the executive development team for a very large, multi-billion dollar, international retailer in Manhattan. With over twenty years of experience, having completely reinvented the company's approach to performance management (which they are still using seven years after my departure), and having been recognized as one of the country's foremost experts in adult behavioral development, they asked me to train computer classes in Microsoft Word and Excel rather than work with executives to develop their next group of leaders. Unbelievable.

ETA: The OP is actually not wrong that there is a skills mismatch, but it's been created by the employers and corporations, not by the workers. I've rarely found an employee who was not eager to participate in development programs. They are, however, rarely available now, either inside or outside a corporate environment. We have not, and will not, unless things change dramatically, developed our bench strength for the next level of managers. Corporations will discover the hard way what a huge, short-sighted mistake this has been.