Experts: Ohio must close residents’ skills gap

Stay competitive in job market to thrive, mayors are told.

Ohio faces high COLUMBUS — stakes as it tries to close its so-called skills gap, experts told mayors from across the state on Sept. 10. Try billions of dollars in earnings, the future of the American dream and the odds of surviving the coming robot revolution.

During a gathering on the Ohio State University campus, members of the Ohio Mayors Alliance learned more about the mismatch between residents’ education and skills and what the changing economy will demand.

Researchers, academics, former governors Ted Strickland and Bob Taft and current candidates for lieutenant governor shared the same message: The gap is real, and making Ohioans competitive in coming job markets is key to ensuring that the state’s people - and its economy - thrive.

“The states that get it right will be the ones that prosper,” said Ohio Secretary of State John Husted, the Republican nominee for lieutenant governor in this fall’s election. “The ones that don’t will fall behind. The same is true of people. The more people that get it right, the more will prosper. The more that don’t, the more we’ll fall behind.”

Ohio’s skills-gap debate mirrors the concerns of Northeast Ohio, where leaders worry about the double economic blow of having residents who lack the skills necessary for good-paying jobs even as companies struggle to fill open positions.

State officials believe 64 percent of all jobs by 2020 just two years from now - will require a college degree or work credential. Only about 42 percent of adults meet that criteria now.

Last year, at the urging of the governor’s office and the Ohio Department of Education, the state legislature set a goal of having 65 percent of adults hold a degree, certificate or other workforce credential by 2025.

That goal is similar to one established by the Indianapolis-based Lumina Foundation, which has been campaigning nationwide for states to set aggressive training targets.

Even supporters admit that Ohio’s objective isn’t really realistic. A growing number of older and less-educated adults are unlikely to seek training as they near retirement, making the 65-percent threshold unreachable over the next seven years if only young people are pursuing credentials.

“It is tempting to get demoralized,” Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley told the group Monday.

But pressing toward the goal matters, she said.

“Rise of the Robots” was just a video game in 1994, said Eric Hanushek, a North Olmsted High School graduate who is now a leading free-market economist at Stanford University. But science fiction is an economic reality in 2018, as automation wipes out jobs that once paid living wages. If workers want to stay valuable, he told the mayors, people need skills that robots can’t replace and must adapt faster than machines.