workforce

With efforts underway to return people to jobs, the time is ripe to rethink our approach to the workforce. Instead of returning to the way things were, now is the time to re-think the kind of country we want to have says Carl Van Horn, founding director of the Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University. Van Horn and Jane Oates, president of WorkingNation, presented their ideas for workforce recovery and lessons learned from the Great Recession during a Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta Center of Workforce Development webinar yesterday.

Frontline workers in Michigan who don’t have a degree may find a tuition-free pathway to college or a technical certificate, in the same manner as the G.I. Bill following World War II, while others states are also pursuing options for increased educational opportunities for workers who have lost their jobs due to COVID-19.

In early April the Department of Labor announced a $42.5 million grant opportunity for the Youth Apprenticeship Readiness Grant Program. The program is to support the development of new or expanding registered apprenticeship programs (RAPs) for youth, including quality pre-apprenticeship programs that lead to a RAP. The grant program supports the president’s executive order and the Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration’s goals to promote pre-apprenticeships, to develop a strong youth apprenticeship pipeline, and to expand access to youth apprenticeships. Such programs provide both a pipeline of educated workers for industries, as well as greater opportunities for youth exploring career options.

SSTI recently took a look at some of the pre-apprenticeship programs in different states across the country and the impact some are having.

STEM and the American Workforce, a new report backed mostly by science associations, points to STEM jobs as one-third of direct employment, two-thirds of total employment, and 69 percent of America’s GDP. The authors highlight that 60 percent of STEM jobs are filled by people without bachelor’s degrees.

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.”