Business Indiana, Friday, January 31, 2020 — 11
Leaders redefine workforce training needs By CHAUNCEY ROSS chauncey@indianagazette.net A n emerging reality of the Indiana County labor market is the the workforce looking for jobs (November 2019, ac- cording to Pennsylvania De- partment of Labor and In- dustry), and untold num- bers of job opportunities that go wanting for the right people to take them. ther employers nor job- seekers should go wanting for each other. vance its more experienced people and open the entry- level positions for the peo- ple leaving schools and en- tering the job market.
mismatch. After a century of coal mining and gas- and oil-well drilling, a trio of blue-collar fossil fuel production indus- tries, as the economic lifeblood of the region, Indi- ana County since the 1980s has transitioned to a some- what more diversified yet labor driven economy. But the transition since the 1980s from a world of mining, where even a diplo- ma wasn’t a necessity to earn a family-supporting paycheck, to a world of jobs requiring more formal skills has only been slowly an- swered by a transition in schooling in Indiana Coun- ty. Under traditional educa- tion philosophies, the mantra of high schools has been to graduate statistical- ly high numbers of students academically prepared to enroll in four-year college Continued on Page 12
that help job seekers and employers to meet, but each local WIB is locally tailored to work in conjunction with economic development-re- lated organizations to mini- mize the reaction time and create resources to inter- vene for both the dislocated workforce and the incum- bent workforce members of a community. What has lead to the prob- lem is the arrival of retire- ment age for the baby boomer generation, still a big bubble in the population curve, Salony said. It has ar- rived while a corresponding dip in the population age range, declining numbers of young people reaching adulthood, is inadequate to take the positions that are coming open. Complicating it is that “you lose years of knowl- edge that you cannot easily replace,” Salony said. Prop- erly, a workplace would ad-
“We’re reaching a perfect storm kind of thing, where we’ve been hearing about an aging workforce and it never has really happened until now,” said Mary Salony, the assistant director of the Tri- County Workforce Invest- ment Board. Called the Tri-CountyWIB, that serves Indiana, Arm- strong and Butler counties, the agency is charged with implementing provisions of the federal Workforce In- vestment Act of 1998 and the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act of 2014. The board is a govern- ment-appointed panel of private business leaders and education officials charged with gauging the supply and demand for workers in their communities. They oversee “One Stop Career Centers”
But a lot of those essential skills in the trades are not easily found in entry-level job candidates, the human resources officers have dis- covered. “I don’t get the sense that there are large numbers of workers who are not willing or able to work,” said Mark Hilliard, president of the In- diana County Chamber of Commerce. “The problem starts with a population de- cline across the country, in- cluding here in Indiana County. We need to keep our young people here and find opportunities to grow our population. And it is not just the chamber who does this.” TWO FACTORS can be identified for amplifying the
dual nature of the unem- ployment statistics as a measure of a robust econo- my. Historically, the challenge has been seen as the single mission of achieving zero percent unemployment, meaning that everyone available to work has a job. But in parallel to that yard- stick of reaching 100 percent employment is the quest to fill 100 percent of the jobs available at the county’s workplaces. As nearly as they can, employers have provided appropriate op- portunities and employees have brought appropriate skills and abilities to make their matches. Yet the county has sur- pluses of both: 5.8 percent of
The notion that every job should be filled has inspired action by employers, eco- nomic development execu- tives and educators who share their concerns that operating at full production, particularly in manufactur- ing and goods production, gives root to a vibrant econ- omy. Political and business leaders have spelled out new philosophies for preparing the citizens of In- diana County — today’s stu- dents, tomorrow’s workers — for a rewarding life ahead in their home area, and have worked at getting other leaders to embrace the evo- lution of training so that nei-
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