Good Jobs and Skilled Workers

New research on the coordination challenges states face in developing infrastructure, energy, and semiconductor workforces with new federal money. Also, community colleges emerge as key players in the $500M federal Good Jobs Challenge, and Workday on its new documentary about skills-based hiring.

The biggest bid to boost America’s economic competitiveness and national security since the Cold War will succeed only if trillions of dollars in new federal investments generate good jobs that are matched with a sufficient supply of skilled workers. And much of the complex workforce coordination will play out across state governments.

New research from Harvard University’s Project on Workforce and the National Governors Association looks at emerging strategies employed by governors in 16 states as they seek to realize the economic potential of the $300B the federal government has begun spending each year on three funding streams for infrastructure, clean energy, and advanced manufacturing. 

This industrial policy push could create up to 2.9M jobs annually in the U.S. Yet that will only happen if state workforce systems are up to the task, says Kerry McKittrick, co-director of the Harvard Project on Workforce and one of the report’s co-authors.

“We’re dealing with so many agencies that haven’t done workforce before,” she says.

The report describes four common obstacles that surfaced during interviews with the governors’ workforce development policy advisers:

• Uncertainty around the role of the public workforce system.

• Challenges in efficiently allocating resources for workforce development.

• Insufficient institutional capacity to administer funds.

• Difficulty developing long-term workforce plans.

“We’re trying to overlay a new approach on existing systems,” says Joseph Fuller, a professor at Harvard Business School and co-lead of its Managing the Future of Work Project.

Current state workforce systems aren’t very effective, however, notes Fuller. And while reforms are tricky, he says the new money and an industry-driven approach could spur needed changes.

“The force that can drive the system forward are employers,” Fuller says. “They’ve got the currency that counts”—namely jobs and economic growth.

Many experts have echoed this viewpoint to me in recent months, as more federal workforce grants come from agencies other than the Education and Labor Departments. While the Commerce, Transportation, Energy, and Defense Departments don’t have as much experience working with community colleges, a different way of doing things can be an advantage, they say.

Fuller says a welcome shift would be less demarcation between agencies. Seemingly intractable problems with workforce development and economic mobility require “multidisciplinary solutions,” he says.

Likewise, new money for in-demand job training and education programs can come with performance strings to help ensure a pay off for students, and states. Fuller points to the big funding bump community colleges in Texas are getting with a new performance formula that attempts to track the ROI of credentials.

“In some ways, the future is going to look like Texas,” says Fuller, arguing that the state’s new approach gets “way closer to the truth” of what’s actually working for students and local economies.

Promising Strategies: The new analysis from Harvard’s Project on Workforce and the NGA includes seven strategies from states to meet workforce demands from the three federal funding streams. While these approaches appear promising, the researchers caution that it’s too early to know whether they are effective.

One example comes from Indiana, which has sought to align education, workforce, and economic development programs. The state is mobilizing its education system to prepare for expected labor needs, the report found, including jobs created through billions of dollars in semiconductor-related investments over the next five years.

Ivy Tech Community College, Indiana’s two-year college system, has partnered with Purdue University to provide education and training opportunities for positions throughout the microelectronics workforce, including both short-term credential and doctoral programs, note the researchers.

Other states are trying to modernize their workforce systems. Kathy Hochul, New York’s Democratic governor, has established a network that is spending $200M to create four new workforce development centers in Upstate New York that are designed to meet the needs of advanced manufacturing. Meanwhile, Jared Polis, Colorado’s Democratic governor, has tapped the state’s workforce system convening power to create regional talent plans.

The report says states typically lack sufficient data tools for making solid labor market projections, an obvious problem for long-term workforce planning. Timing also is a crucial factor: It can take years to develop training programs, recruit participants, and train workers. Yet as Work Shift’s reporting found in Detroit, training too many workers too early leads to skilled technicians without jobs.  

McKittrick says many states worry about the labor market data challenge. The report points to promising approaches, however, noting that some states have developed data dashboards to track projects and workforce needs. Utah, for example, created an opportunity tracker to monitor and manage infrastructure projects.

The Kicker: “The states really can still align workforce systems,” says McKittrick.

Community Colleges and Commerce Money

The Good Jobs Challenge is a $500M precursor to the Commerce Department’s expanding role in workforce development through the CHIPS and Science Act.

Community colleges have emerged as key players in the program, Colleen Connolly reports for Work Shift.

The Biden administration created the Good Jobs Challenge two years ago to support regional workforce development, with a goal of helping 50K Americans break into jobs that are both in demand and that can sustain a family. The 32 grants, which are administered by the Commerce Department’s U.S. Economic Development Agency, also require colleges, employers, and state agencies to work together.

Nearly 30K people so far have enrolled in job training under the program, with 8,700 already in jobs, reports Connolly, citing preliminary EDA data. 

“Community colleges are really good at reaching people where they are,” Patrick Bourke, program lead for the Good Jobs Challenge, told Connolly. “They’re able to meet students’ needs and provide wraparound services or supportive services in a way that’s designed to be individualized.”

Skills-First on Netflix

Workday last week rolled out a documentary that makes a case for skills-based hiring and opening up doors for more jobseekers without four-year college degrees. UNTAPPED: Closing America’s Opportunity Gap was produced with SpringHill and is available on Netflix. It follows six young workers as they participate in skills training through Year Up United and pursue corporate internships.

Familiar expert voices from the skills-first space are featured in the film, including Byron Auguste, Angela Jackson, and Gerald Chertavian. But the documentary also includes interviews with corporate heavyweights such as Mary Barra, Jamie Dimon, Doug McMillon, and Mark Cuban.

The documentary’s goal is “shining a light on this issue at scale,” says Carrie Varoquiers, Workday’s chief philanthropy officer and the film’s executive producer. She hopes it will “change hearts and minds” among leaders of small and midsize businesses.

The message also is aimed at young people for whom college wasn’t an option. “There is another pathway,” says Varoquiers. “There are other opportunities.”

For the last decade, the cloud-based software company’s philanthropic arm has backed direct service providers that focus on working learners, including Per Scholas, Generation USA, and Year Up United. But those nonprofits currently can serve just several thousand people per year.

So while Varoquiers says Workday will continue to support those organizations, in recent years it has sought to spur systems change by backing groups like Opportunity@Work, Jobs for the Future, SkillUp, and the National Skills Coalition.

Workday is helping many of its business customers move to a skills-based talent strategy, Varoquiers writes in a blog entry. The company can offer technical expertise and is poised to play a role in AI-enabled skills matching. “We feel that we can offer more than cash,” she says.

Reactions to the film and its skills-first advocacy have been overwhelmingly positive so far, says Varoquiers: “There’s really no arguing against it.”

Open Tabs

Enrollment Cliff
Undergraduate college enrollment is up 3% this fall, compared to the previous fall. But first-year student enrollment was down 5%, with declines across all income levels, according to preliminary data from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. Dual-enrolled high school students—whose numbers have boomed in recent years—contributed substantially to the overall growth. And shorter-term credentials continue to be popular, with a 7.3% increase in enrollment in undergraduate certificate programs.

Labor Shortages
To confront both the aging U.S. population and challenges AI poses to the labor market, policymakers should back worker training through tax credits or training subsidies, MIT’s Daron Acemoglu writes in The New York Times. The federal government also should identify and fund types of AI that can increase worker productivity and help with looming labor shortages. Yet Acemoglu, who just won a Nobel Prize, says these issues are not getting the attention they deserve.

Career Clusters
A lack of alignment between the U.S. system for career preparation and requirements for good careers makes it difficult for employers to find needed skilled talent, according to Advance CTE. The group has released an updated framework for career clusters, which seeks to provide states and educators with a foundation to build more relevant, industry-directed, and learner-centered CTE programs.

AI Literacy
Adobe has committed to spending $100M this year on a goal of helping 30M people globally to develop AI literacy, content creation, and digital marketing skills by 2030. The donations, scholarships, product access, and partnerships will expand on the Adobe Digital Academy, which focuses on upskilling and career pathways. Training and certifications will be available through Adobe’s collaborations with Coursera, K-12 schools, colleges, and nonprofits.

WIOA Bill
A contentious labor-law compliance provision in a congressional bid to reauthorize the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) addresses a vital need for accountability in federally funded workforce programs, according to a brief from the Roosevelt Institute and the Good Jobs Collaborative. Disagreement over the measure contributed to the stalling of WIOA’s reauthorization. The brief calls for the protection to be expanded to other federal programs.

Digital Credentials
Learning and employment records could transform the job market by providing a standardized, digital method for workers to document and communicate their skills, concludes a report from the Burning Glass Institute. Employers want competency data, verification, and simplicity with LERs, and this should be prioritized in their development, finds a report from UpSkill America, which was commissioned by Western Governors University.

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