Despite a cooling of the economy, hightechnology companies are still crying out for skill

Despite a cooling of the economy, high-technology companies are still crying out for skilled workers. The Information Technology Association of America projects that more than 800, 000 technology jobs will go unfilled next year. The lack of qualified workers poses a huge threat to the U. S. economy.

The most commonly cited reason for this state of affairs is that the country's agrarian-age (农村时代) education system fails to prepare students in the primary and secondary grades for the 21st century work. Yet an inadequate and outmoded education system is only part of the problem. A less tangible (明确的) but equally powerful cause is an antique (过时的) classification system that divides the workforce into two camps; white-collar knowledge workers and blue-collar manual laborers.

Blue-collar workers emerged in the United States during the Industrial Age as work moved from farms to factories. White-collar office workers became a significant class in the twentieth century, outnumbering(多于) the blue-collar workers by mid-century. Corporations increasingly require a new layer of knowledge worker; a highly skilled multi-disciplined talent, who combines the mind of the white-collar worker with a solid grounding in mathematics and science (physics, chemistry, and biology). These "gold-collar" workers—so named for their contributions to their companies and to the economy as well as for their personal earning ability—apply their knowledge to technology.

The gold-collar worker already exists in a wide range of jobs. The maintenance technician who tests and repairs aircraft systems at American Airlines; the network administrator who manages systems and network operations at Procter & Gamble(宝洁公司) ; the engineering technologist who assists scientists at Sandia National Laboratories; and the advanced-manufacturing technician at Intel can all be regarded as gold-collar workers.

What does the word "projects" in the first paragraph mean？

A．Throws

B．Predicts

C．Concludes

D．Claims