orary American workplace. Correspondingly, efforts to determine what steps are being taken to ameliorate this problem will be examined herein. The problem to be addressed is specifically stated as follows: The excessive numbers of American workers, believed to be about 65 percent overall, who cannot read at the ninth grade level, has created a major loss of productivity and increased business costs for American companies.
The purpose of the study is to examine the causes and the effects of illiteracy in the American workforce and workplace. Both the extent and the impact of the problem will be examined, along with efforts undertaken to reduce its negative effects and improve the literacy rates of American workers. The goal of the research is to identify successful literacy improvement strategies used in American firms today. Such a study can be useful in identifying deficits in our understanding of illiteracy and its effects.
With 65 percent of the American workforce identified as reading at or below the ninth grade level (Smith, 1995), the question of how illiteracy impacts upon the workplace is of readily apparent significance. Smith (1995) has commented that literacy training has taken on enhanced significance as American firms begin to achieve globalization and move toward technological proficiency. Woolridge (1994) echoed this sentiment, stating that the changing demographics of the American workforce contains certain attributes that are beginning to undermine the application of information technology (IT) as a productivity tool in the public and private sectors. Demographic characteristics that are associated with this shift include race/ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic status, technology deficits, and deficits in what educators and others regard as ôcore competencies.ö Literacy, the ability to read at or above the ninth grade level, is regarded as a critical core competency that a worker must possess - not only for per...