Help wanted

When engineering and technology giant Siemens Corp. decided to open a gas turbine plant in Charlotte a few years ago, it expected it would be easy to hire 1,000 people to staff the factory. After all, the North Carolina city is a manufacturing hub.

About 10,000 people applied for the jobs; 6,000 of them were asked to take a basic skills test in math, reading and technology.

Only a third passed.

Therein lies the reason why, in a new survey, 98 percent of the CEOs of top U.S. corporations fear lagging science and math skills are hurting their businesses and the economy.

In the survey, by Change the Equation and the Business Roundtable, CEOs described a costly shortage of workers skilled in science, technology, engineering and math. While 4.7 million jobs are going unfilled, more than 18 million Americans are not working in full-time jobs.

The CEOs blame the skills gap. According to the survey:

• The biggest skills gaps are in advanced computer and quantitative knowledge. Sixty-two percent of CEOs reported problems finding qualified applicants for jobs requiring advanced computer/IT knowledge, and 41 percent, for jobs requiring advanced quantitative knowledge.

• Thirty-eight percent of CEOs say at least half of their entry-level applicants lack basic STEM literacy.

• STEM skills are a ticket to jobs. Over the next five years, employers expect to replace nearly 1 million employees needing basic STEM literacy, and more than 600,000 employees needing advanced STEM knowledge.

At a panel of CEOs following the release of the survey, Jamie Dimon, chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase & Co., said his banks employs thousands of IT workers and math and science Ph.Ds. “We have more programmers than Google, I’m told,” said Dimon. “Even our tellers in our branches — we have 15,000 — need basic math.”

But American schools are not producing graduates able to handle what Dimon described as “the back-office jobs” that require basic accounting and operations skills. “The greatest sin is that half the kids in inner-city schools don’t graduate high school,” said Dimon. “You want to wipe out hope and opportunity and the American Dream, that is a pretty good place to start.”

Eric Spiegel, president & CEO of Siemens, said even those who passed the skills test for his company’s Charlotte factory still required training in advanced manufacturing, involving automation, robotics and software.

When Siemens couldn’t find training programs here, it sent educators to Germany to learn advanced manufacturing and machine tooling, and then created training programs in North Carolina. Spiegel said his company is now duplicating the apprenticeship programs standard in Germany to provide hands-on training to students still in high school.

Though advanced manufacturing jobs pay more than $50,000 a year, Spiegel said parents and schools in Charlotte initially were leery of a manufacturing path for their students. Siemens had to explain these jobs promised secure futures and good incomes.

The skills gap is not just about math and science, said Maggie Wilderotter, chairman and CEO of Frontier Communications. “It’s about what it takes to participate in the workforce. We also have to train all employees coming out of the education system about what it is like to work in a company, and responsibilities that come with that. And in basic literacy.”

The CEOs endorsed the Common Core State Standards as a vital step in shoring up the academic skills of American students.

“We are big advocates of Common Core, ” said Rex Tillerson, chairman and CEO of Exxon Mobil Corp. Referring to the political strife around Common Core, Tillerson said it’s fine if school districts and states want to rebrand the standards as a compromise gesture, but there must be shared standards and assessments so student performance can be judged across states.