Tapping Youth and Older Workers to Maintain a Competitive Workforce

The growing need for a skilled workforce in the U.S. has prompted policymakers, educators and industry leaders alike to explore a wide range of options for ensuring a pipeline of qualified workers with specialized skills to fill both new economy jobs and those that will be vacated by the aging population. Two recent examples include grants awarded to states to help re-train older generation workers for jobs in high-growth industries and legislation introduced in the U.S. Senate to provide resources for high-school students to secure high-wage careers in their regions.

While much attention is focused on recruiting youth to build a skilled workforce, perhaps overlooked are older workers, who play a key role in maintaining a competitive workforce, contributing skills and experience that younger workers do not yet possess.

Currently, 22.6 percent of the U.S. population is over the age of 55 and by 2016, the number of workers 55 and over is projected to increase by 36.5 percent, according to the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL). Often underutilized, older workers are a valuable labor pool that can help meet the workforce needs of regional economies, according to DOL. To help connect older workers with careers in growing industries, the agency recently awarded $10 million to organizations in ten states (Indiana, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Texas, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin) that specifically target older workers who have been laid off and are seeking re-employment. Another $3.6 million for the effort was invested by Atlantic Philanthropies.

The grants also will be used to help increase skills of older workers in fields including health care, advanced manufacturing, information technology, energy, green construction, and transportation.

A press release outlining the Department of Labor grants is available at: http://www.dol.gov/opa/media/press/eta/eta20090890.htm.

U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) introduced last month the Promoting Innovations to 21st Century Careers Act to help high school students prepare for careers in high-skill, high-demand fields. The legislation calls for $912 million in federal competitive grants ranging from one-year planning grants to five-year implementation grants, which would be available for state and regional partnerships. Partnerships would need to include representatives from high schools, post-secondary education, business, labor, workforce, and economic development. These collaborative partnerships would use the grants to create career pathways, including curriculum and coursework development, academic and guidance counseling strategies tied to career pathways, and to develop registered apprenticeship programs.

The bill also would establish a National Academic and Career Innovation Center under the U.S. Departments of Education, Labor and Commerce to manage the grant program and implement research and evaluation programs to document and disseminate best practices.

The goal is to build local coalitions, find out what jobs are needed and how students can be trained for them, said Sen. Murray in a Tri-City Herald news article. For example, in her home state of Washington, the program could train workers in the aerospace and healthcare industries and prepare a next generation workforce of scientists and researchers for Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

The text of S.1532 is available at: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c111:S.1532:.

Want to learn more about successful programs that are Enhancing the Science & Technology Workforce?

SSTI’s 2007 Excellence in TBED Award Winner, the Virginia Council on Advanced Technology Skills (VCATS), is an alliance of employers and economic development partners created to address the challenge of ensuring a quality workforce for Virginia’s technology-based industries. Through its competency-based training program designed by ten major employers in science- and technology-intensive advanced manufacturing, the initiative is creating skilled manufacturing technicians to meet local industry needs. Download SSTI’s exclusive interview with Sheryl Bryan, VCATS project director: http://www.ssti.org/media/bryan.html.

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Vol. 14, Issue 20