On the eve of the Republican Primary in New Hampshire I’m driving home from the office and listening to the news on NPR. Steve Inskeep is talking to a group of six women in Derry, N.H, asking them to weigh in on important issues in this election.

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His interview turns to Samantha Boudreau, a 21 year old student. Boudreau believes, as a lot of politicians do, that job creation is a big issue in this election. She will be graduating in May and, she says, “I'm going to have significant student loans to pay off, so getting a job is very important.”

Without missing beat, Inskeep asks Boudreau how much in student loans she owes.

“Over $140,000” Boudreau says.

A woman’s voice in the background says “Oh, my god.”

My thoughts exactly.

This election year I’ll bet we’ll be hearing a lot about creating jobs and putting Americans back to work. Both parties have a jobs creation plan.

Some proposed plans want to stimulate small business incentives for hiring where, as some believe, most new jobs are created. Some aspire to fixing the education system so that more students enter into high-demand fields such as science, technology, engineering and mathematics, more commonly referred to as STEM fields.

It’s a topic that creates warm and fuzzy sound bites and brings hope to the unemployed and disenfranchised. But don’t be fooled about the rhetoric. Any smart politician knows it’s not about job creation. It’s about job fulfillment.

Right now there are millions of jobs in America going unfilled because we don’t have enough qualified people to fill them.

It’s not about the jobs. And it’s not about changing the education system either. In fact, I’m dumbfounded by the cost of higher education today. Costs of colleges and universities are skyrocketing, putting them out of reach for most middle class Americans. Tuition and fees at public universities, according to the College Board, have surged almost 130% over the last 20 years -- while middle class incomes have stagnated.

Like Boudreau, two thirds of students graduating have student loan debt, at an average $23,186. Of those, about half will still be repaying their loans in 20 years, according to FinAid.org. And, for many, that may very well mean they won't be able to buy a home, save for retirement, or fund the next generation's education.

On the other hand, the world of work has changed. America may never be the manufacturing center of the universe again. But many of the job losses are being replaced by other opportunities that qualified and trained employees could do. Though the numbers and projections vary some, there are an estimated 3-5 million jobs currently available and sitting unfilled because we do not have the workers with the proper skills and training to fill them.

A recent position paper from Microsoft

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[MSFT  Loading...      ()   ] says that we will have 2 million unfilled job openings by 2014 in the STEM fields. It could be worse. Some estimates of the shortage are much higher than that.

Yes, there are an estimated 15 million Americans out of work. And, that number is sure to grow. In fact, one study conducted by The McGraw-Hill Research Foundation put a number on what will happen next. Their research predicts a shortfall of more than 35 million skilled and educated workers over the next 30 years in addition to the millions that are open and unfilled right now. Other research conducted by interested parties on all sides of the issue paints a similarly chilling portrait.

I feel a deep sense of empathy for them not only because they’re struggling to make ends meet for them and their families, but because there’s dignity in work and earning a living and doing something productive in the world.

On a macro level, these numbers are stunning to me. But on a micro level, I believe them because I wake up every day and begin a frantic search for qualified people to fill critical roles in my own organization. And, all the evidence says that the numbers in my world will only continue to get worse unless we address them in some way now.

You see, I work in the data storage industry, one of the fastest-growing segments in the high tech business. According to an annual study from IDC, a renowned provider of global intelligence in the IT industry, the data storage world is doubling every 2 years, and will increase by a factor of 50 in the next decade.

Yet, the number of workers who can design, manage, and support these systems is growing by a factor of only 1.5. These are the people I’m looking for - highly skilled, technical workers for data storage jobs in an industry that didn’t even exist just a few short years ago.

This is the pain my colleagues and I feel every day. If the definition of full employment is a 5% unemployment rate, then, here in the middle of The Great Recession, we in the data storage business are actually experiencing negative unemployment!

My industry is a perfect, real world example of what’s being labeled as the Skills Gap. But it’s not just the high tech industry. All across America, in just about every industry, and arguably all around the world, we have too many workers that lack the technical, professional and soft skills to get jobs in today’s market.

The annual Manpower Group Talent Shortage Survey says that 75% of employers globally cite a lack of experience, skills or knowledge as the primary reason for the difficulty in filling open positions today. But with a mere 1 in 5 employers investing in training and education to fill these jobs, the gap is only going to get wider.

But the consensus is clear: American workers are woefully underprepared for the future for the most part, and they lack the skills necessary to function in the new world of work.

Something has to be done, and done now.

So what do we do?