Myriad of Factors Contribute to Improving American Workforce for Global Marketplace
America’s workforce is challenged with adapting to demands for new skills and additional training as technology continues to influence all facets of the working world. Job descriptions are morphing to meet needs as companies stay competitive in the global marketplace.
Foundations can play an important role in assisting communities and institutions as they continually adjust their sights to ensure that Americans remain strong, capable team members and leaders while companies and organizations keep pace with the ever-changing landscape.
Panel moderator and CEO at the Lumina Foundation Jamie Merisotis crystalized how strong the demand is for post-secondary learning talent is with a few eye-opening statistics:
- Two-thirds of all jobs being created today require some form of post-secondary education. A college degree, a certificate or a certification or some other form of post-secondary learning.
- In American society today, we are seeing a shortage of two million jobs that we are unable to fill because of a lack of qualified talent, talent that needs to be developed in that post-secondary learning context.
What has resulted is, since 1990, for the first time modern American history, demand for college educated workers exceeded supply, a reversal from what has existed for much of the 20th century, according to Merisotis.
And the rising demand is not unique to the United States. Around the world, international competitors are recognizing the situation and gaining on America.
Merisotis said that “today, the U.S. stands 11th in the proportion of its citizens with a high quality post-secondary credential; we were number one in the world, just a decade ago.”
Combined with “the growing opportunity gap and rising inequality, which we can see in things like the persistent gaps in educational attainment by race, income, gender and other factors,” the rising demand for talent increases greatly, impacting Americans’ well-being and our country’s success as a whole.
The panel identified several areas that require the attention and collaboration of the government, educational institutions, philanthropies and corporations.
Kerry Sullivan, president of the Bank of America Charitable foundation, looked at the problems pragmatically and found three areas that are adding to the dearth of higher trained workers.
“We come to this discussion through social justice… Somewhere between five and six million people in this country are out of school and out of work so they’re disconnected and need to be brought into the fold. I think, quite frankly, the system has failed them. Secondly… there are some 2.3 million people incarcerated in this country so we need to think about reentry, because if communities aren’t working, America will be less competitive. These issues are local issues, but they’re national issues and global issues. Third is how we create pathways to reentry and not only just for the incarcerated, but for those who have huge barriers to employment.”
University of Maryland Baltimore County President Freeman Hrabowski has experience as both a teacher and as an institutional administrator and relayed his observations from talking with citizens who are going through these struggles.
“Number one, most people don’t understand – and now I’m speaking as an educator – that a large proportion of the younger population and not-so-young population cannot read and think well and are intimidated by jobs that require that kind of work.
“Number two, when people ask me ‘What does it take to succeed in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math), people are always shocked when I say it starts with reading skills… reading skills are at the base of everything. Reading and thinking.
“And number three, we tend in this country to separate arts and humanities from science and engineering, not understanding you need people who can connect those areas. That because we talk about STEM we should not suggest that we don’t understand the importance of the other areas.
“Finally, having students on campus from over 100 countries, I think it’s very important when we look at both international diversity and domestic diversity as we think about the work force and what we would need.”
For Michael R. Strain, Deputy Director of Economic Policy Studies and Resident Scholar, American Enterprise Institute, the difficulty for too many Americans to reach the middle class is an issue that cannot be diminished and complicates the talent search problem and boiled contributing factors down to technology and international trade.
Strain used the example of how technology has transformed the job of a bank teller from a middle class waging earning position to one whose salary has been squeeze by the advent of ATM’s and online banking.
“This presents an enormous challenge to the country,” Strain said. “How can we get people into the middle class?
Meanwhile, the globalization of the economy – “which, on net, is good, and on the long term, over many decades, will be very good” – and international trade has hit many communities very hard, shutting off other avenues for workers and their children to reach the middle class.
“It’s a moral imperative to recognize what’s happening, to recognize how much harder it is to get into the middle class than it was in previous generations and to create new pathways to make sure that people have the skills and education they need. We have a moral obligation to the country to reestablish those routes.” if repaired could yield progress in lifting our workforce.
For Carla Roberts, President and CEO of the Fremont Area Community Foundation in Fremont, Mich., she has seen firsthand the effects of the current conditions. The home of Gerber baby food and an example of small-town America, Fremont is now more apt to welcome retirees than young professionals due to the altered occupational landscape.
The county is primarily agricultural and unemployment hovers around 5 percent, but 41 percent of the working population cannot meet their family’s basic needs and 59 percent of the school population are on free or reduced lunch and education achievement drops dramatically from third grade to sixth grade.
“The reality is that we don’t have the workforce that we need for the companies to continue to grow and prosper,” Roberts said. “And if we don’t do something, about this we’re going to be in pretty big trouble, because we’re in areas where people don’t want to move.
“The younger people that come to our community are with spouses who are originally from there or they are from there themselves who come back in their late 20s and early 30s to raise their families because it’s still a wonderful place to raise a family.
“If we don’t do workforce work, we’re not going to have a workforce to keep the companies we have, much less to attract new companies to our area.”
