As rising unemployment and layoffs beset workers around the country, Iowa faces a different problem: a surplus of jobs. Or to put it another way: a shortage of workers. A survey of companies by Iowa Workforce Development, a state agency, found as many as 48,000 job vacancies, in industries including financial services ? Des Moines trails only Hartford as the nation?s insurance capital ? health care and skilled manufacturing. One estimate projects the job surplus to reach 198,000 by 2014, with vacancies increasingly in professional positions. Greater Des Moines alone faces a shortfall of 60,000 workers in the next decade. The state provides a small, advance view of what some economists predict will be a broader shortage of skilled workers in the next 20 or 30 years.
See "As Iowa Job Surplus Grows, Workers Call the Shots", John Leland, The New York Times, June 1, 2008