Yes Polly, training the untrained is indeed expensive

Polly Toynbee tells of us of a marvellous scheme by which the young and untrained get trained and thus gain decent employment. However, the real message of this story is not quite what Polly thinks it is I fear:

The shadow work and pensions secretary, Rachel Reeves, and Stephen Timms, the shadow employment minister, were in Cardiff this week to study it, as they plan their own similar job guarantee scheme. They visited Sapiens, an international software company that has taken on 12 trainees from Jobs Growth Wales. All these young IT graduates were lost temping in part-time, low-level jobs. One had been stuck working part-time in a bingo hall for a year, others in shops and pubs, each applying for hundreds of jobs without getting interviews: "Everyone wanted people with experience. If you haven't any, you've no hope," said one. The company said it would never have hired these 12 without the programme, because training raw recruits costs so much more than taking on experienced staff. But with Jobs Growth Wales covering six months of intensive training, Sapiens ended up keeping 11 of them permanently.

You can indeed read it the way that Polly does, the Glorious State taking over and making things better where the market simply bumbles ineffectually.

Or one could try to look a little deeper. For example, all of these "young IT graduates" had been in compulsory education for 11 years of their lives, presumably an additional two to get into university and then three once there. So what the hell is our State run education system managing to do over those 16 years if it cannot prepare them for an entry level job opportunity?

The second and more major point is that yes indeed, it does cost money to train people. And the cost of that training can indeed mean that people would prefer to hire the already trained. Which is why it is so stupid to put a minimum price on untrained labour. For that pushes the total costs of untrained labour, wages and training costs, above the costs of hiring someone who already has their act together.

That is, a minimum wage will, if it is high enough to actually matter at all, will by definition be crippling to the employment prospects of the young and untrained.

As Britmouse so graphically points out here.

Perhaps instead of adding another layer of State interference we sould undo the cause of the original problem?