Effects of Illiteracy in the Workplace I. The

There is a pressing need for literacy training for American employees. While on-the-job written materials are primarily prepared for individuals who can read from the ninth grade to the college levels, only 35 percent of the total American workforce is identified as reading at the ninth grade level 9SMith, 1995). Where once the definition of illiteracy was the ability to read and write at no more than a fourth grade level, today this has been changed to the ability to read and write at the ninth grade level (Smith, 1995). This reflects, in part, the increasingly sophisticated

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ite, compute, solve problems and communicate well. Sunoo (1999) presented some revealing data that indicate the extent of the problem in the United States: . American businesses are estimated to lose more than $60 billion in productivity each year because of employeesÆ lack of basic skills; . About 20 percent of AmericaÆs workers have low basic skills and. about 75 percent of unemployed adults have reading or writing difficulties; . Workers who lack a high school degree earn a mean monthly income of $452, compared to $1,829 for those with a bachelorÆs degree; . The number of companies reporting a skilled worker shortage more than doubled from 1995 to 1998, from 27 percent to 47 percent. These data surely identify the scope and some of the effects of the problem of workplace illiteracy. The issue of workplace illiteracy is exacerbated when one factors in a new form of illiteracy identified by Ndahi and Gupta (2000) - ôtechnological illiteracy.ö Workers who lack basic and/or workplace literacy skills and core competencies in reading, writing and communication are also highly likely to lack technological literacy skills as well. Computers drive the contemporary workplace, regardless of the kind of work that
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 3648
Approximate Pages = 15 (250 words per page)

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