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Jobseekers stand in line to attend the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. career fair held by the New York State department of Labor in New York on Thursday. 本周四，求职者排队参加纽约州劳工部在纽约举办的马丁路德金招聘大会。 （Lucas Jackson/Reuters）
The Great Recession has accelerated what was already a long-term trend: A job market that holds much more promise for the educated and trained than for people with fewer skills. 本次大衰退（The Great Recession）加速了业已存在的长期趋势：就业市场更青睐于有知识并受过培训的劳动者，而不是缺乏技能的人。
Consider just one big-picture comparison: The unemployment rate in March was 4.2 percent for people with college degrees, versus 12.6 percent for people who lack a high school diploma, with the national average right in between those two figures at 8.2 percent. 我们看一下总体对比情况：3月份，具有大专以上学历人群的失业率为4.2%，而高中学历以下人群的失业率为12.6%。全国平均失业率恰好在二者之间为8.2%。
And beneath that broad trend, some credentials are much more valuable than others. In many fields of study, recent college graduates have jobless rates that are close to the national average or higher, simply because there are so many experienced workers who are also looking for jobs. But in health and education fields, where demand is high, the jobless rate is only about 5.5 percent for recent grads, according to Georgetown University's Center on Education and the Workforce. 乔治敦大学教育与劳动力中心（Center on Education and the Workforce）的研究报告显示，在上述大趋势之下，一些资格证书的含金量明显比其它证书要高。在许多研究领域，新大学毕业生的失业率已经接近或高于全国的平均水平，原因很简单：在这些领域，有很多经验丰富工人的也在找工作。而在卫生和教育领域，用人需求度高，新毕业大学生的失业率仅有5.5%。
"It's really imperative that people pay attention to where the demand is going to be," says Nicole Smith, a senior economist at the Center on Education and the Workforce. "It's not just about which occupations are going to grow," she says, but also about how skill levels influence earnings. 该中心高级经济师尼克尔?史密斯（Nicole Smith）说，“至关重要的是我们要注意岗位需求变化。”“我们不仅要了解哪些岗位的需求正在增长，”我们还要清楚技能水平对收入的影响程度。
Even before 2008, the rise of new technologies was boosting demand for skilled workers, while global competition was eroding the number of blue-collar jobs fields where a high-school diploma could be a ticket to middle-class wages. The recession amplified the process, imposing some of the sharpest job losses on less-skilled factory and construction workers. 甚至在2008年之前，新技术的兴起就刺激了对技术熟练工人的需求，而与此同时，全球性竞争也在侵蚀蓝领工人的工作岗位，以往他们仅凭一张高中文凭便可以拿到中产阶级的收入。本次衰退加快了这一进程，导致适合缺乏技能的工厂工人和建筑业工人的岗位急剧消失。
Of course, the recession's toll was broader than that. Plenty of college grads are unemployed or underemployed. But the hardest to fill jobs these days often are ones where pay is relatively high, not low. 当然，衰退的影响远比上面分析的还要大。很多大学毕业生都是未就业状态或未充分就业状态。但是目前最难填补的岗位却经常是那些报酬相当高而不是相当低的。
In computer science and math, for example, every online "help-wanted" listing in March was matched by less than 1 unemployed person in those fields, according to the Conference Board, a business research group in New York. The average wage in those occupations is nearly $38 an hour. 例如，根据设在纽约的商业研究机构世界大型企业联合会（Conference Board）的统计，三月份计算机科学专业和数学专业，每个在线招聘看板几乎没有失业者来求职。相关职业的每小时平均工资接近38美元。
Similarly, the supply of workers is relatively tight for engineers, scientists, and health-care practitioners, all fields with high average pay. By contrast, lower-paying fields including food service, personal care, factory production, and transportation all have a high ratio of jobless workers to job openings. 类似地，工程师、科研人员和医疗卫生行业从业者的供应状况也相当紧张，他们的平均工资也都很高。与此形成对照的是，包括餐饮服务、个人护理、工厂操作工以及运输业在内的低收入工种，其失业工人与岗位空缺之比却很高。
And Ms. Smith says the long-term outlook is clear: The jobs of the future will demand more know-how than the ones of the past. 史密斯女士说，求职市场的长期前景很清楚：未来的工作岗位需要更多掌握专门技术的人。
The pattern has implications for workers of all types. For people who don't attend college, Smith recommends being licensed or certified for some trade, for example. 这个趋势对每个行业的工人都有指导意义。对那些没有上过大学的人，史密斯建议他们最好能取得一些职业的许可证或资格证书。
There is some good news in a new Labor Department forecast, which predicts job gains in virtually all broad occupational categories. The department's "Employment Projections" says job openings in the coming decade will include many for less-skilled workers: 2 million in retail sales, 5 million in cooking and food service, and growth in numerous smaller occupations as well – bicycle repairers, the nation will need about 6,000 more of you. 在劳工部公布的一份新报告中还是有一些好消息的。《就业预测》（Employment Projections）会定期公布所有工作岗位大类的招聘求职预测。该报告认为在接下来的10年里，岗位空缺将会使许多缺少技能的工人获得就业机会：有200万在零售业，500万在餐饮服务业。另外，很多较小职业的岗位空缺数也在增加——比如在全国范围内，就有大约6000个自行车修理工岗位等着你。
The labor forecast covers some 750 occupations, from ones poised to shrink in size (Postal Service workers, telephone operators) to ones with faster than average growth. By 2020, jobs are expected to open up for 49,000 pest control workers, 232,000 preschool teachers, 59,000 architects, 93,000 musicians or composers, 40,000 translators, 315,000 social workers, and 25,000 masons or tile setters. 这份岗位预测报告涵盖了大约750个工作岗位，既有正处于萎缩之中的岗位（比如邮政工作人员和电话接线员）也有高过平均增速的岗位。据预测，到2020年会有诸多新增工作岗位：病虫害防治员49000名；幼教232000名；建筑师59000名；乐师和作曲人93000名；翻译40000名；社会工作者315000名；以及石匠或砖瓦匠25000名。
But labor experts still see the problem of a "skills mismatch" as a big one. 但“技能失配”仍然是劳工专家眼中的大问题。
"Many employers are saying they can't find workers with the right skill sets," says Julian Alssid, executive director of a consulting group called the Workforce Strategy Center, in Barrington, Rhode Island. 朱莉亚?阿西德（Julian Alssid）说，“许多雇主都在抱怨找不到具有良好技能背景的工人。”她是一家设在罗德岛巴林顿镇（Barrington, Rhode Island）的名为美国劳工训练中心（the Workforce Strategy Center）的咨询机构的常务董事。
It's visible in specific fields and it's a more general issue. The workforce researchers at Georgetown argue that for several decades, the education system hasn't been boosting work-force skills as fast as the economy could use. So the pay premium for high-skill workers has been growing, contributing to a widening of income inequality. 这种现象在特定的行业表现明显，也是一个非常普遍的问题。乔治敦大学劳工研究人员称，几十年以来，教育体制一直未能根据经济发展的要求加大培养劳工劳动技能的力度，因此为高技能工人所付的报酬便一直在增加，从而加大了收入的不均衡性。
How bad is the problem? That's a matter of debate. Ohio University economist Richard Vedder argues against too much emphasis on college enrollment. "The number of new college graduates far exceeds the growth in the number of technical, managerial, and professional jobs where graduates traditionally have gravitated," he writes in a recent Bloomberg Businessweek column. 问题的严重性仍处于争论之中。俄亥俄大学经济学者理查德?韦德（Richard Vedder）批评（美国社会）太过注重大学入学率了。他在最近一期《彭博商业周刊》（Bloomberg Businessweek）上撰文称，“新大学毕业生人数远远超过了毕业生传统择业的技术、管理和专业工作岗位数量的增长速度。”
A Businessweek analysis, conducted by the Seattle firm PayScale, finds that college generally yields a positive "return on investment" for those who go. But the return varies a lot, from $1.7 million (spread over 30 years) for a graduate of CalTech to an average of $333,000 for 853 colleges analyzed. 由西雅图PayScale公司主持完成并发表在《商务周刊》上的一份分析报告发现，对那些有机会上大学的人而言，大专院校通常会产生一个积极的“投资收益率”，但是收益率的差别却很大，加州理工学院的毕业生可以拿到170万美元（在30年的时间内），而受调查的853所大学的平均回报率仅有33.3万美元。
Georgetown's Center on Education and the Workforce is bullish on the demand for education, whether that means a college degree or another credential. Although the Labor Department research emphasizes the minimum skills required to enter a line of work, Smith says it's more important to look at the education levels that are typical of workers in that field. By that measure, the share of US jobs demanding more than a high school education has roughly doubled in the past three decades, to about 60 percent of all jobs. 不管社会需要的是一个大学学位还是一纸资格证书，总之乔治敦大学教育与劳动力中心对社会对教育的需求充满了信心。尽管劳工部的研究报告强调了进入某一行业所需要的最低劳动技能，但史密斯认为，更重要的是我们要审视一下从事该行业工作的典型工人的受教育程度。从这个角度分析，美国工作岗位对接受高中以上学历教育的劳动者的需求在过去的30年里大致翻了一番，占到了全部工作岗位的60%。
Meanwhile, other nations are also "upskilling" in a bid to capture more of the high-wage jobs. 与此同时，其他国家也在加强对大学生的技能培训以帮助他们获得更多的高收入岗位。
"We're in a globally competitive marketplace," Mr. Alssid says. "If we can't produce the workers needed today, we’re going to lose those jobs." 阿西德先生说，“这是一个全球竞争的劳动力市场。如果我们不能为社会提供时代所需要的劳动者，我们就会失去那些工作岗位。”
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