The report suggests that the structural barriers which prevent movement between the two markets cannot be explained according to the potential productivity of secondary workers or other job-relevant factors. A large number of the jobs in the primary labour market could be performed by many of those who are now trapped in the secondary labour market, but these workers are never given the opportunity to do so. For this reason, their confinement to the secondary market cannot be attributed to their lower levels of education and training. Let us examine evidence for this view.

Barriers to Primary Labour Market Employment

It cannot be denied that cognitive skills (like literacy and numeracy) and technical abilities as imparted by schooling and training programs are highly important for modern industrial production processes, office practices, etc. Obviously, these cognitive and technical skills can be very important in the determination of Income and occupation levels. For example, physicists, health care professionals and machinists are workers who possess highly specialized abilities which to a considerable extent determine their suitability for their jobs and the salaries they receive. However, Bowles and Gintis argue that occupations like this are relatively atypical in terms of the sophistication of the skills required and the scarcity of these skills in the workforce. They suggest that the mental-skill demands of most jobs---including those in the primary labour market---are quite limited, and in the case of technical skills, the possibilities for gaining them on the job are usually substantial. 8

Credentialism

In spite of this, according to the National Council on Welfare, the education and skill requirements for entry into jobs in the primary labour market are high---unrealistically so. With regard to skill and experience qualifications, the Council report states:

For example, previous experience may be called for even though any competent person could learn the job in a few days, or a very specialized skill might be demanded although it's not used in the work. Even when the applicant is perfectly capable of doing the job, if he can't meet the inflated requirements, he won't get hired.9

The Council report makes special mention of what it sees as unreasonably high education requirements for primary jobs. It states that "educational requirements, in particular, often bear little or no sensible relation to the skills and aptitudes needed for a job".10

According to sociologist Ivar Berg in his influential study subtitled The Great Training Robbery, educational requirements for jobs in the U.S. have risen much more quickly since the 1950's than have net changes in skill requirements for them. This inflation of educational requirements, termed "credentialism", has become a pervasive phenomenon across North America. 11