Some economists cite structural factors as to the reason why unemployment has persisted at these elevated levels around 10%. By structural they basically mean job mismatch: workers who have skills in one area are in surplus even though there are jobs in demand, though they require a different set of skills. One way to rectify this predicament is to have firms more willing to expand their applicant pool and train those they do hire for those jobs.
It has become common wisdom in hiring that firms would rather leave a position unfilled than recruit someone who didn't fit the job requirements. A new hire must hit the ground running so-to-speak and therefore he should not expect much handholding on the part of the employer. So, if you are not a perfect match and can't already do everything stated in the job description, don't expect to get a call back.
I wonder why this move away from on-the-job training has taken place. It used to be that firms would accept a wider range of applicants after screening for basic intelligence, competence, and ability. They would take their new recruits and train them for upwards of several months. After successfully completing the training, the new employees would be ready to take their place alongside their fellow co-workers. This training not only produced better employees, it also engendered more loyalty as workers could see the firm invest time and money into them and would reciprocate with their work effort.
Now, it seems like most firms give new employees at most a few days to become acclimated with them and most of that time involves processing employment paperwork for the new worker. Since, the worker cannot expect to be trained by the firm in any meaningful way, one shouldn't expect much loyalty from him should a better opportunity arise.
One reason given as to why firms have reduced their training is because they fear that after investing in the worker, he might just bolt to a competitor which may reward him with better pay because it didn't have to budget for training. However, to take that POV, you must assume that workers are only satisfied by more money, when there are multiple factors that workers take into consideration when deciding on where to work, including how the firm treats them initially.
I have a pretty good hunch why a lot of businesses aren't interested in doing this anymore: there is an extreme amount of external pressure not to do it. If one of my techs doesn't know how to do a particular thing right away, the client doesn't want to hear that. Instead, they want to hear that I'll give them a discount on the tech's time. If the tech makes a mistake, I have to cover the costs for making up for it. Even if a tech knows how to do something, but they're just out-of-practice at it, and they take 3 hours to do something that I could do in 1, I probably won't bill the client for a full 3 hours.
It creates a hardship on the business. The culture around the customer-business relationship in the U.S. has changed from the stereotypical 50's ideals to one where the lower price usually wins, and if you're competing on price, you can't afford to train people.
It doesn't help that there are an awful lot of people out there now that seem to think that they're worth a lot of money even if they don't know how to do a job. Go ahead and try telling a potential employee for a technical position, "Well, you're not familiar with any of this, but we're willing to train you if you're willing to start at $10/hour". Unless they're in high school, it probably won't fly.
Or, as another anecdote: one of the things that my business offers its clients is professionalism. Techs are supposed to show up polite, friendly, clean, and dressed for business casual. Repeatedly nagging my techs about their appearance hasn't helped; they still show up with bed hair, with cargo pants, with t-shirts not tucked in, despite that I pay them better than any of my competitors. I'm gonna have to get mean about this soon, and that makes me a little sad.