Skilled workers wanted, but costly

Wage, housing gap hurts recruitment

Half of more than 300 South Florida employers surveyed say they’re finding it difficult to find employees who have the technical and soft skills they need, according to a new tri-county Workforce Skills Gap report released Tuesday.

Soft skills include critical thinking, communications and teamwork. Some area employers also said they were looking for punctuality and reliability.

At the same time, the report points to a disparity between wages being paid and the cost of housing and living in South Florida.

“This community is the worst regional area in the country when you compare the cost of housing to the levels of wages. That gap — we have to do something about it,” said David Armstrong, president of Broward College.

Armstrong made the report public Tuesday at a Six Pillars Broward event at Broward College in Davie.

The report covers the Miami-Fort-Lauderdale-West Palm Beach metro area and was conducted by Boyette Strategic Advisors of Little Rock, Ark., for the Greater Fort Lauderdale Alliance. It was paid for with a $125,000 grant from financial services company JPMorgan Chase & Co.

The study found that the highest future demand for regional employees will be in the aviation and aerospace sectors and in information technology.

Former U.S. Sen. George LeMieux, who is heading a committee to help brand Fort Lauderdale as a place for “great talent.,” said growth of the aviation sector will be a prime focus.

“We think aviation is a competitive advantage for Broward County,” said LeMieux, board chairman and a shareholder of the Gunster law firm.

Armstrong said Broward College plans to offer a bachelor’s degree in aviation. The college has partnered with Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach and is close to formalizing partnerships with other aviation universities, he said.

But challenges include disparity between the wages paid to and the cost of living in South Florida, which hurts recruitment from higher-paying metro areas, the report says.

The average hourly earnings in Broward County, for example, is $21.37 compared with an average of $23.17 nationally. Yet the cost of living in Broward is 10 percent higher than for the entire U.S., the report says.

For its analysis, Boyette conducted more than 80 discussions with employers, economic development specialists, educators and community leaders; and did on-