JCEDC head talks on preparing for careers of future

By Pam Wilson: pwilson@dailyunion.com

JEFFERSON — The jobs of tomorrow require a lot more than the ability to make widgets.

They require creativity, problem-solving, people skills, technological expertise and the ability to continue learning new things.

As executive director of the Jefferson County Economic Development Consortium, Vicki Pratt hears from companies all of the time about what they need in the workforce of today, and what they expect to need more of in the future.

Pratt has made it her business to pass this information along to the area schools. That’s because as the schools thrive, so do the communities.

Meanwhile, what the schools teach has a long-term impact on local businesses. Either they turn out graduates who are ready to enter the workplace — with polished technical, people and problem-solving skills — or businesses will suffer.

Without a ready workforce in a given area, some businesses will close down and others will move to where they can get what they need.

Pratt represents both the JCEDC, which is a public Jefferson County entity, and Thrive, a public/private partnership in Dodge and Jefferson counties with strong involvement from major area employers. She shared her involvement with the Jefferson Rotary Club last week.

Thrive states its aim as “leading the change necessary to support economic growth in Jefferson and Dodge Counties to result in healthy, thriving and growing communities.”

It has three goals: business development, workforce development and helping marketing and branding efforts.

Through its efforts, the community economic partnership aims to retain primary (non-retail) employers and to attract new ones.

Pratt said that the economic development entities she represents don’t focus on retail because “retail follows rooftops.” In other words, if households and income levels reach a certain level, retail business will follow.

But major employers, the majority of them manufacturers, depend on the availability of a skilled workforce.

“These are 20- to 25-year decisions,” Pratt said, noting that when it decides to locate a plant in a specific area, a company has to look toward the workforce of tomorrow, not the workforce of today.

That means Pratt fields a lot of questions from potential employers about how students are being prepared in the local school systems. How many are studying a particular computer language, for example?

Pratt said her organization recently completed a labor availability analysis specific to this greater region, again focusing in on manufacturing.

She said a local region, or “laborshed area” would supply the employees for a future business were it to site there.

The study looked at thenumber of people looking for work — including those who already are employed, but who are scouting for opportunities elsewhere, and those who left the workforce for some reason, such as having children, and who are interested in returning, as well as those who are not currently employed.

The study found that there was an available pool of 235,000 people in this laborshed area who are looking for work ... but not just any work. It has to be work with salaries, benefits and working conditions that would support the laborers and their families.

In the area of workforce development, Pratt said, her organizations work closely with a lot of other entities, including those providing adult education (like technical schools) and the Jefferson County Workforce Development Center.

Pratt cited the Bureau of Labor Statistics as saying insufficient labor and/or skill restrains production. She said the single-most important problem businesses cite that’s holding them back is the difficulty in finding skilled workers.

Currently, manufacturing employs a labor force 17.4 percent below what it would like, and that gap is expected to grow.

Among Wisconsin counties, Jefferson County employs the highest number of manufacturing workers per headcount, and offers comparatively high wages, Pratt said.

Meanwhile, Wisconsin ranks second in the nation in jobs in the manufacturing sector.

According to statistics Pratt shared, the labor force is expected to grow 0.6 percent annually from 2016-26. But the number of people available to do those jobs is dropping as baby boomers and their successors exit the workplace.

Already, labor participation went down from 67 percent in 2000 to 61 percent in 2006, traceable to the aging workforce.

Meanwhile, goods producing jobs are expected to go up 0.1 percent per year and service providing jobs are expected to go up 0.8 percent per year.

Labor productivity has been rising by 1.6 percent per year, faster than the GDP (gross domestic product).

“What does this say?” Pratt asked. “Older folks will have the opportunity to stay in the workforce longer. Workers age 55 and up are expected to grow to 24.8 percent of the workforce in 2026.

There’s another important trend to look at, too. As time goes on, the number of opportunities open for lower-skilled workers are dropping, while those for higher-skilled workers are rising.

There still are people who do not show up in the labor participation, such as those in jail, Pratt pointed out. That means they also do not show up on the tax rolls, contributing to their local communities.

Pratt cited the Wisconsin government’s online “Worknet” as listing the following high-growth occupations through 2024: operations research assistant; personal care aide; home health aide; computer systems analyst; and personal financial adviser. All of these have numerous job openings, although not all pay extremely highly.

Another list, from USAwage.com 2018, cites five jobs in top demand and the average wage paid for each of them:

1. Registered nurse (55,940 jobs open in the state, average pay $67,910).

2. General/operations manager (32,590 jobs open, average pay $101,840).

3. Accountant/auditor (22,090 jobs open, average pay $62,020).

4. App (computer applications) software developer, (15,840 jobs open, average pay $82,790).

5. Computer systems analyst (14,270 jobs open, average pay $76,270).

According to national data that looks at top-paying jobs, the best upcoming jobs are all in health care, such as podiatrists, dentists and pediatricians, but these all take many years of costly schooling and high-level studies, so they are clearly not for everyone.

According to Kiplinger’s, the best jobs for the future in terms of demand are: apps software developer; construction worker; financial adviser; home health aide; information security analyst; and medical services manager.

Moving on to the top skills needed for the workplace of the future, Pratt said more flexible skills have moved up the list.

According to the World Economic Forum, the most valuable workplace skills people will need to survive/thrive in the ongoing “fourth industrial revolution” are: complex problem-solving; critical thinking; creativity; people management; coordination with others; emotional IQ; judgment/decision making; service orientation; negotiation; and cognitive flexibility.

Pratt stressed the importance of “people skills,” saying that many people — especially young people — tend to “live on their phones” these days.

Today’s high-schoolers will face 40 to 50 years in the work world, however, and they’ll have to deal with people of all kinds.

Pratt said that it is less important today to be an expert on a particular thing, and that learning how to learn is the new guide.

“We are inundated with data,” Pratt said. “You’ve got to be able to think through — what’s the data telling you? You’ve got to make decisions based on that and then you’ve got to be able to get people to follow your path.”

Furthermore, the pace of technological change means no one can know quite how the jobs of the future will be done. 

She shared a similar list titled “Preparing for a Globalized World,” was released by Pearson Education. It listed four top skills, including:

• Thinking skills, including creative/critical thinking, complex problem-solving/metacognition and learning to learn.

• Social skills: attitudes and behaviors that enable success, communication and collaboration.

• Global skills, including a person’s awareness of the local, global and multicultural environment. Finally comes:

• Digital skills: information and digital literacy allowing a person to thrive in a technology-rich world.

“Educational success depends on the ability to apply knowledge in novel situations,” Pratt said.

Pratt said that 46 percent of employers who participated in a recent survey reported that they had difficulty finding workers. The hardest jobs to fill include: the skilled trades, doctors, sales representatives, teachers, restaurant/hotel staff, nurses, laborers, engineers and technicians.

A generation or so ago, “common knowledge” asserted that the path to a great job must come through a four-year college or university degree. Times have changed, though, Pratt said.

Yes, there are many people who should go to college and will not attain their desired career without a university degree. But in fact, Pratt stated, college is a waste of money for a person like her nephew, who sought technical training instead and found success in the skilled trades, earning more than many of his college-educated peers.

“A lot of kids end up in ‘Plan B’ jobs because their parents forced them to go to college and when they do get a job, they walk in that door with no skills,”’ she said.

As a side note, Pratt noted that “teens’ perceptions of earnings are way out of whack,” saying that many expect to support themselves by doing each others’ nails or working in child care, when, statistics-wise, these are barely living-wage jobs, let alone family-supporting ones.

“Kids have wild perceptions about what they’re going to do and what that will earn,” she said.

Building on a keen interest or strength can certainly be a good thing, but career planning must also be tempered by practicality.

Still, Pratt said, the employers she has talked to are eager to take on young blood, as long as they show up every day with a desire to work and the desire to learn.

Bringing the topic back to the local area, Pratt noted that Jefferson County has opportunities for young people with skill and the right mindset to have a successful career with no college debt.

Furthermore, she said, not only are there good-paying skilled and technical jobs right in the local area, but many companies are paying employees to get additional training.

At Jefferson High School and many others across the area, programs like Youth Apprenticeships give young people a chance to get hands on experience and gain a skill-based certification they can put to work right after — or even before —graduating from high school.

Pratt shared another report, released in May by the Milwaukee Business Journal, that listed the 25 top jobs in Wisconsin that do not require a college degree. The salaries for them all are $55,000 per year or higher.

With the aging workforce, it’s important young people step up to prepare for these opportunities, she pointed out.

Pratt said that Jefferson County actually is in better shape than many Wisconsin counties when it comes to demographics. Still, from now through 2040, the working-age population (age 20-64) is expected to rise 6.2 percent, compared to a rise in the retirement-age population (age 65 and up) of 103.7 percent.

In conclusion, economic development, workforce development and education are intertwined, Pratt noted.

She said, in essence, K-12 educators are in the “workforce development” business, preparing young people for future careers.

“The future of our economy depends on the availability of people who are able to actively and productively participate in the economic engines of our country,” Pratt said.