John, Roger, Andrew, and others:

I read Murray's report some time ago and found it interesting but probably
not believable by many policymakers. One thing that was particularly
interesting in the Murray et al report is that after extensive arguments
about how it would be economically beneficial to the nation to  raise all
48 million adults who score below Level 3 up to Level 3 on the
international tests, the authors went on to say that their analysis also:
quote “suggests that the Canadian economy will have difficulty absorbing
the additional supply of literacy skill. This reinforces the need for
measures to increase the demand for literacy skill to complement the
supply-side investments." end quote.

This seems to mean that if all Canadian adult’s literacy skills were raised
to level 3 the
economy couldn't support these new levels of skills so somehow work would
have to be made more demanding of literacy skills. So instead of raising
adult literacy skills because the workplace demands higher skills, it will
be necessary to change jobs so that they are harder and could use higher
skills. Presumably, then, the new, more demanding jobs would pay higher
wages and increase the return on investments in adult literacy education.
But this raises the specter of cycles of raising skills, then raising the
demand for these new skill levels, raising skills, raising demands, etc etc
and at some point this is senseless! The Murray et al report seems to imply
that if skills demands of jobs were not raised, then it is possible that
increasing the skill levels of the population of adults as they are
recommending would produce a surplus of skilled workers with skills higher
than demanded by the workplaces and therefore companies could hire them at
lower wages than were previously paid to scarce higher skilled workers!

All in all the report seems to be based on some shaky assumptions about how
many Canadian adults are “at risk” for low literacy  and it appears to me
to make contradictory statements about skill levels and the returns to
investments in adult literacy education!

Tom Sticht