Thursday night in Las Vegas, the Democratic presidential candidates took swings at one another in a sort of rhetorical equivalent of the boxing championship matches that are often held in the neon desert.

The Republican contest is getting crankier too as we rapidly approach the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary—not to mention the other nominating contests that have been moved up to compete with the traditional launching states.

All the heat is not producing much light when it comes to policies that will help U.S. workers improve their skills so that they can improve their position in the global economy.

Oh sure, candidates will talk about threats to jobs, such as allegedly flawed trade agreements or the sometimes ruthless brand of capitalism practiced by private equity firms.

But Julian L. Alssid, executive director of the Workforce Strategy Center, argues that they’re missing a fundamental point—good jobs exist, but qualified applicants don’t.

“American workers just aren’t getting the training and education they need to fill the well-paying jobs,” Alssid said in an interview.

In a September 19 op-ed in The Christian Science Monitor, Alssid wrote that nearly half of adults over the age of 25 only have a high school diploma. But 65 percent of the fastest-growing occupations require more education than that.

“We’re talking about an issue of national importance,” he says. “If we can’t fill the skilled jobs we have, they really are going to go away. It is amazing to me that this isn’t at the forefront” of the presidential campaign.

To their credit, the candidates have discussed health care, Iran and other topics that will be critical for the next administration to tackle.

But what they haven’t done—nor has Congress for that matter—is move beyond hand-wringing about people left behind by the inexorable ascent of global competition.

There is no single answer to the problem. Federal, state and local governments as well as universities, community colleges, businesses and the K-12 education system must work together to develop education and training programs for emerging fields.

The C-suite can be a catalyst for the private-sector part of the equation. But the government side needs commitment from the top too.

“One of the challenges of workforce development is that it spans agencies,” Alssid says. “That requires leadership. It’s the president’s job to make it happen.”

And it’s the job of candidates for that office to talk about it in Iowa, New Hampshire and the rest of the country.