Right for the jobs
Alarm rings to train a new regional workforce
About 20 months after its report predicting that the region will be short as many as 80,000 workers by 2025, the Allegheny Conference on Community Development has provided an update showing the projected deficit still looms. The updatehighlights the difficulty of engineering change and the need to step up workforce development efforts.
Fortunately, the update, Inflection Point 2017-18, provides a road map for picking up the pace. Employers should communicate with schools and local workforce boards about their needs so that graduates possess the necessary mix of technical and soft skills. Employers without internship programs should consider establishingthem as a means to keep Pittsburgh’s college graduates here — about half now leave — and attract job candidates fromother cities.
Because technology and workforce needs will continue to evolve, workers must treat “up-skilling” — learning new skills — as a careerlong venture. Employers should increase the use of on-the-job training so that jobs don’t go unfilled because of unnecessary education or experience requirements. Career and technical schools must be certain their programs best fit the needs of students and their communities. Right now, the conference said, cosmetology students are over-represented and machine-technology students under-represented in CTE programs.
The update stressed the need to build inclusion into a bigger, better workforce. That means enhanced recruitment of minority and female candidates, plus training and promotion opportunities that can propel lowerwageworkers to better careers.
If the conference’s initial Inflection Point report was a wake-up call, the update is more like an alarm bell and call to action. The region’s economy can’t grow without a sizable, well-prepared workforce, and Pittsburgh’s is lacking because of decades of population loss, failure to attract and retain talent and a comingwave of retirements.
When it announced its search last fall for a second headquarters city, Amazon set various criteria for contenders to meet. While Pittsburgh certainly meets many of those requirements, including a high quality of life and worldclass universities, workforce capacity couldbe viewed as a weakness.
Of course, workforce capacity is much larger than Amazon. Uber and Google are likely to continue growing operations here, the ethane cracker plant planned for Beaver County will pose unique workforce demands, and the region’s eds and meds economy continuesto hum along.
The update shows the need to build a workforce that’s broad in scope, deep in talent and inclusive across demographic groups. All of Pittsburgh’s business, civic and educational leaders should get behind this effort. Job creation matters little if there aren’t people to do the work.