Workforce board sees

education as key

to next three-year plan
By Scott Nicholson
nicholson@wataugademocrat.com

The High Country Workforce Development Board is working on a three-year plan to approach the changing job market, following up on a state analysis released earlier this year.

Workforce development director Carol Coates said the short-term plan involves trying to overcome perceptions established over the years, especially regarding the fixation on four-year college degrees. Jobs that require certification or a two-year technical degree can be just as valuable, if not more, to those workers over the course of a career.

“What we’re seeing is that some level of education beyond grade 12 is necessary,” Coates said. “Young people need to understand that working as a plumber today, or working in a manufacturing plant today, is different from what it was 50 years ago. People have an image and perception of what a job might be. Parents also need to look at that as well. We think there’s a mindset in this country and a bias toward a four-year degree.”

The HCWDB serves a seven-county region, so no one solution will fit each county. However, some trends remain true for all areas of the state, including a need for a trained work force. While many employers are happy to train workers in specific niche positions, they like to see job candidates who already have mastered a basic skill set and have also shown more subjective skills that will allow them to successfully work with others.

With businesses such as Google, which is already filling high-level positions for its new plant in Lenoir, coming to the area, training is becoming even more critical for job seekers. “The industries that have survived in our region certainly have some very specific requirements,” Coates said, with the thriving businesses using a highly trained workforce with top-level technical skills. The needed skills also extend to teamwork, management, and more subtle skills beyond the practical knowledge. While employers value decision-making and reliability, more and more often the job market is demanding that workers come in with those basic skills already in place.

“The State of the North Carolina Workforce” report projected the next 10 years of labor supply and demand, with much of the analysis already entering the realm of “conventional wisdom” and other sections recognizing both the changing makeup of the state’s population and the changing job sectors. While traditional manufacturing has experienced a well-documented decline, the loss was mostly felt in rural areas where towns built up around large plants. This also goes to what Coates calls “a rural-urban disconnect,” as more jobs migrate to the urban centers.

So-called “middle jobs” are also disappearing. Those jobs are generally considered the kind that a semi-skilled worker could use to support a family. This situation is made more critical by high-demand, better-paying jobs being clustered around larger metropolitan area and higher-skilled workers coming in to compete for those jobs. To catch up, existing “middle jobs” workers might need to pursue more education or certification levels.

The job picture is also darkened for rural areas because not only have they lost textile, apparel and furniture jobs, those areas tend to have slow growth and hence less opportunity. While about 40 percent of the state’s new jobs require little more than short-term training, the pay will be barely half that of jobs for those with a high school diploma and additional education or training. The state also traditionally lags behind the rest of the country in average wages earned.

Coates said workforce developers have responded to that challenge by increasing focus on education, particularly in trying to reach students in grammar school or early high school years.

“That helped validate what we were already doing,” Coates said.

“It’s one of several different strategies for the emerging workforce.”

Another factor in the years ahead is the retirement of baby boomers. With North Carolina becoming one of the fastest-growing states as measured by population, the job market will be overhauled as retirees age out and new workers enter the state. The state is projected to add 30,000 new adults each year, which will offset the retirees but not fill the new openings. While that means there could be as many as 40,000 new job openings annually, the training-level requirements mean that those jobs won’t automatically be filled.

That “skills gap” will likely be met by more foreign-born workers, and while those people tend to be younger, the gap will also be filled by those aged 50 to 64 who are not yet ready for retirement. Typically, older workers tend to look for work in places where they have already planned to settle for their retirement years.

The bottom-line revelation is no surprise: the work force must continue to be adaptable and prepare itself for new challenges. Coates said education will always be a critical component for future job needs, and those who entered the workforce without that degree or training may already find themselves lagging behind their peers.

She said the N.C. Commission on Workforce Development established working groups to address those job needs and the HCWDB is working with other workforce development agencies to create broader regional approaches.