Companies can't fill open skilled jobs, so unskilled jobs don't open, CareerBuilder CEO Matt Ferguson told CNBC Friday.
"Part of the bottleneck we have in the labor market is the skilled positions can’t get filled by the companies for a variety of reasons, and therefore there’s a whole host of unskilled positions that don’t even open up," said Ferguson.
That means those who lack skills are stuck in part-time, low-paying jobs, if they can get one at all.
Another problem: Small businesses are "not hiring en masse today, and when you see that come back I think you’ll see the labor market overall and the unemployment come down quickly," he said, noting that the private sector is the place where job creation will happen.
Ferguson spoke before the November jobs datawere released showing the unemploymentrate down to 8.5 percent and the labor market adding 120,000 jobs.
According to CareerBuilder data, companies with "high-volume" hiring include Wells Fargo
, Sears, and Chicos FAS .