Graphics: A closer look at the job skills gap

Four years after the Great Recession, jobs remain scarce and unemployment painfully high. Yet good jobs that do exist can go unfilled for lack of qualified workers, employers say. The best jobs - jobs that pay well with benefits - are in health care, high-tech manufacturing, social services, finance and construction. All require sophisticated training or years of school. The challenge is to find workers with the right skills, or quickly provide those skills, to nurture the economic recovery and lift the long-term unemployed out of a deepening hole. So far, that challenge is not being met.