Missing pieces
Ms. Krofcheck saw Pittsburgh with fresh eyes when she joined Partner4Work in 2006, then known as the Three Rivers Workforce Investment Board.
Arriving from her native Czech Republic, where she had been a management consultant for nonprofits, she heard the stories of adoration: the city’s post-steel rebirth, the transition into the service economy, the tech-driven innovation with world-class universitiesas the engine.
But there was an undercurrent to the story.
After the Great Recession hit in 2008, economists focused on job growth and unemployment rolls. Politicians celebrated the post-recession recovery in this region, marking the decline of joblessness from a peak of 102,000 people in February 2010 to 56,100 in October 2017, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
A deeper analysis of the same data shows just one of every 10 people who left the unemployment rolls in the past seven years actually held a job in the region in October. The rest left the labor force altogether.
In the big picture, the region’s workforce shortages can be seen as tied to demographics, with older workers retiring faster than younger people can replace them. Pittsburgh’s population has declined in recent years, with people moving to other metro areas, and university graduates are likely to move away for jobs.
In the past four years, the majority of governmenttracked job classifications in the Pittsburgh region showed modest to high growth: computer systems, services for the elderly, highway construction among them, according to a PostGazette analysis of employment across nearly 200 largest professions. At the same time, industries like metals manufacturing, dry cleaners,
If it’s not because of laziness or imprudence that people drop out of the workforce, employers perhaps need to get more creative with how they hire.
Among those who have decided to look for work again — like the job-seekers at PA CareerLink — many have experience to put toward a job even if it doesn’t exactly line up with employers’ official requirements.
Ms. Krofcheck estimates 6,000 job seekers in the region have “some college” experience, and most have two or three years toward a bachelor’s or associate’s degree that they never finished. Many prime-age workers were decades into a career when they lost their jobs and have skills that don’t transfer directly — like the roughly 1,400 people who have lost their jobs in ironand steel mills since 2013.
In October, 64 percent of online job ads in the region required education of a bachelor’s degree or higher, according to Partner4Work’s labor market report. About 56 percent asked for three to five years of experience or more.
If employers were more flexible, Ms. Krofcheck reasoned, the pool of candidates would expand. She is beginning to get people to listen.
In a 2016 report, business leaders with the Allegheny Conference on Community Development warned of a coming 80,000-worker shortfall by 2025. The Allegheny Conference, the preeminent group of executives and investors in the region, partners with other groups to advance business interests.
In that workforce report, employers acknowledged a need to change.
“We’ve got to figure out how to connect [workers] to opportunities, how to get the companies to bring them in and train them, and do whatever they need to do,” said Dennis Yablonsky, CEO of the Allegheny Conference, last year.
Further, the group selected Stefani Pashman, who has led Partner4Work for the last seven years, to take the reins after Mr. Yablonsky steps down at the end of the year.
“Those of you who know me know I am not patient,” Ms. Pashman told the annual meeting of the Allegheny Conference in November. “We are not living in your grandfather’s Pittsburgh, and this will not be your grandfather’s Allegheny Conference.”