It is an interesting problem of the "new economy" though. Companies won't hire anyone unless they are absolutely one hundred percent perfect, leaving business with thousands upon thousands of open positions unable to be filled and just as many crying for work.

We hear statements like "the people aren't well educated enough," or "not smart enough" time and time again, but it misses the real mark. Jobs of the past were tied to time-based constraints, such as deteriorating products, so hiring anyone to get the job done, no matter how poor of an employee, was better than losing everything.

Coming from an agriculture-based background, farmers are always complaining about the quality of help, more-so than technology companies. However, you cannot afford to wait until someone good at the job comes along. When the crops are ready, you have to harvest them no matter what. That means taking on sub-par labour.

In the information industries, time does not matter. If it takes decades to find the right person, it is better to wait for that person because of the risks you state. Educating the masses isn't going to change anything. Changing the attitudes of business is the only solution if we want to see employment numbers rise again.

I think the problem is that people are finding that having that top 10% kind of person is basically required to stay competitive. There's considerable effort on the other side of the coin too, in designing systems from foolproof patterns that 80% of the job market can learn. The fact of the matter is that this is an industry where 5 people from the top 2% of the market can disrupt and displace 500 from the middle 50%. In my opinion that's why YCombinator is so successful.