What to Do About America’s Low Sky Workforce

Photo Credit: National Review Some bad news for America, not on the political front this time, but in what corporate executives call human resources.

It’s from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s report on adult skills, based on 166,000 interviews in 24 economically advanced countries in 2011 and 2012.

The verdict on the United States: “weak in literacy, very poor in numeracy, but only slightly below average in problem-solving in technology-rich environments.”

On literacy, just 12 percent of U.S. adults score at the top two levels, significantly lower than the 22 percent in largely monoethnic and culturally cohesive Japan and Finland. American average scores are below those in our Anglosphere cousins Australia, Canada, England, and Northern Ireland.

One-sixth of Americans score at the bottom two levels, compared with 5 percent in Japan and Finland.