Yesterday’s feature on employment and immigration helped to lay out the two parties’ different positions on this critical election issue.And the story does illuminate the fact that the Progressive Labour Party and the One Bermuda Alliance do have separate approaches to the problem. The PLP, unsurprisingly, emphasises Government intervention, and has placed most of its emphasis on Government-funded job training, like the nail technicians and dry wall training programmes.Its big idea for the future is Job Corps, a residential job training programme which would train around 100 people at a time at a cost of around $6 million a year, along with another $6 million in start-up costs. The OBA, unsurprisingly, would look to expand the economy and the private sector in order to drive job creation.Both approaches have some merit. Ensuring that people, young and old, have skills that are of use in the modern economy or in a changing economy, is essential. And the private sector does not necessarily have the resources or funds, especially in these times, to organise this kind of training, even when it knows it is in its long term interest.But when you have around 3,000 people unemployed, training 20 nail technicians here and 15 dry wallers there is not going to help a lot of people. There are questions as well about what skills should be taught. Nail technicians are something of a luxury and that are not foreign exchange earner.Dry wallers were in high demand in the building boom, and there will be a call for them in the construction of the hospital and the Waterloo House development. But after that, there is almost no building work in the pipeline. The PLP has a bad habit of trying to fix the last crisis (like affordable housing) rather than the current one (economic collapse).The Job Corps sounds like a good idea in principle, but it is not clear why it needs to be largely residential in a place as small as Bermuda. Nor is it clear why a new facility is needed for this, when the Bermuda College can offer many of these kinds of programmes.This sounds quite worthy, but without more detail, it also sounds like it is not worth the expense at a time when young Bermudians need to get training and work quickly. This newspaper also remains concerned that PLP’s main focus is on training for jobs at the lower end of the skills and earnings table.Where there is a dearth of qualified Bermudians is at the upper end. Bermuda has a deficit of accountants, nurses, underwriters and other skilled workers. This does not means that Bermudians should not be trained at all levels, but the Island will only be competitive when it can offer the highest levels of skills to the world. One of the reasons international companies give when they leave is the lack of qualified applicants for jobs.Jobs that can earn Bermuda foreign exchange for example in insurance, banking and tourism are also key. This is not an area that the OBA has touched on much either. Its main thrust is that it can bring about economic recovery, and when this happens, jobs will return as well.There’s merit in this, since $6 million a year job training programmes have to be paid for, and that’s hard to do when your tax base is shrinking. Nor is there much point in training people for work that won’t exist without a turnaround. All acknowledge that a growing economy is the best social programme of all, but the PLP does not seem to give much attention to this.The PLP has given some tax breaks for training apprentices, but it would seem to be more cost-efficient to offer income support to apprentices and trainees and to have them train in their professions or businesses rather than in elaborate Government training schemes.That would lower the cost of doing business, train Bermudians on jobs where there is demand and save the taxpayer money. That’s a combination that’s hard to beat.