workforce

A report on employment trends from hiring firm Robert Half found that 2020 presents greater challenges for employers looking to expand their workforce as the country’s labor market is near full employment and job openings remain at high levels.

More states are employing different efforts to boost their workforce and to seek the best solutions to workforce dilemmas. The National Governors Association (NGA) recognized that governors are exploring ways to guide development and expansion of youth apprenticeship programs and has issued a white paper that explores three strategies governors can use to expand on such programs.

Advancing programs to increase students’ tech skills, raising awareness of the skilled trades, attracting out of state workers by paying moving expenses, and creating a Governor’s Workforce Council, were just a few of the new programs across the states dealing with current and looming shortages in the workforce. This week SSTI takes a look at some of the different workforce development initiatives that surfaced in 2019 as part of our ongoing coverage of innovation programs that were implemented this past year.

Students and tech employers stand to benefit from a new initiative in Virginia that grew out of the Commonwealth’s proposal to Amazon, which is building its second headquarters in Northern Virginia. Last week, Gov. Ralph Northam announced that Virginia will invest in their tech talent pipeline to produce 31,000 new computer science graduates over 20 years.

As employers continue to face a shortage in trained and skilled workers, federally registered apprenticeship programs (RAPs) continue to grow as a response. However, the ability to evaluate these programs depends on the quality of data collection and reporting practices. While there are variations in the federal data collection and reporting standards for adult RAPs, new and innovative programs such as state youth apprenticeship programs face a greater disparity in the quality of data management practices. A new report makes recommendations for state and local leaders on better approaches to evaluating the programs.

If Americans are going to build better careers and share prosperity as technological changes occur, the U.S. will have to implement more comprehensive policies, according to an MIT task force’s preliminary report titled The Work of the Future: Shaping Technology and Institutions. The task force, convened in spring 2018, was motivated by the paradox that despite a decade of low unemployment and rising prosperity in the U.S., there is a pessimism surrounding technology and work, which it says is “a reflection of a decades-long disconnect between rising productivity and stagnant incomes for the majority of workers.”

Expanding and diversifying the nation’s Skilled Technical Workforce (STW) is vital to the nation’s future, according to a new report from the policymaking board of the National Science Foundation (NSF) that predicts a shortfall of 3.4 million skilled technical workers by 2022 unless changes are made.

As the month of September marks national Workforce Development Month, states around the country continue to forge ahead with programs and initiatives to help train the workforce and attract more workers to open positions. This article highlights two new reports out that detail state efforts in various workforce programs, as well as calling out several new or proposed programs in Ohio, Vermont and Arizona that are designed to increase and develop the workforce in each of those states.

Manufacturers are aware and concerned about the aging of their manufacturing workforce, according to a recent report from the Manufacturing Institute’s Center for Manufacturing Research. The report notes that a recent outlook survey found that attracting and retaining a quality workforce is one of the top challenges facing manufacturers, where nearly one-quarter of the sector’s workforce is age 55 or older.

The continuing trend toward automation could widen the disparities between high-growth urban areas and rural counties at a time when workforce mobility is at historic lows, and the current economic health of urban, suburban and rural economies will impact their ability to adapt, according to a new report from the McKinsey Global Institute: The Future