A Difficult Lesson
Job Retraining, Though Touted, Often Fails the Test

By Nell Henderson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 16, 2004; Page E01

After Jerry Nowadsky lost two machinist jobs in a row, watching as his employers in Iowa moved the work to other countries, he decided to go back to school to study computers.

The coursework was hard for a middle-aged former factory worker who hadn't been in a classroom for decades, recalled Nowadsky, now 49. But he earned a certificate and set out a year ago to find work in computer systems maintenance and assistance.

Instead he found a job market awash with unemployed computer workers.

Now, Nowadsky, a married father of three living in Monticello, Iowa, is stocking shelves at a grocery store at night. He said he works 20 hours a week for $10 an hour, making less than half the pay he was pulling in at the factories, with no benefits.

"I've basically given up on computer jobs because they're all going overseas," he said in an interview, adding that he now feels the training was "a waste, because there are no jobs out there."

Policymakers have long pointed to worker retraining programs as a way to prepare the losers in the Old Economy to become winners in the new.

But decades of efforts show that retraining, while politically appealing, is no cure-all for a workforce struggling through economic transition. The success of retraining appears to depend on many factors, including the availability of jobs, the characteristics of the workers themselves and the quality of the training resources provided, according to analysts who have studied and administered such programs. And while some workers may thrive after retraining, many others do not.

Nowadsky's experience illustrates one of the reasons such efforts have often failed. The extra training doesn't help if the jobs aren't there in the new industry.