Indiana’s latest employment news — the jobless rate dropped to 4.4 percent in October and 83,000 people have been added to the workforce in the past year — is welcome and encouraging.
But those numbers also mask troubling long-term trends: Far too many Hoosiers lack the skills needed to land higher-paying jobs, and employers around the state often struggle to hire the talent they need to thrive.
Those gaps are likely to get worse in the next few years. A Georgetown University study published in 2012 found that only 42 percent of working-age adults in Central Indiana had acquired the education level they need to fill jobs in growing sectors such as the life sciences, technology and advanced manufacturing.
Even more alarming, many traditional manufacturing jobs — long the foundation of Indiana’s economy — are being lost to automation and foreign competition.
To put it bluntly: Millions of workers in Indiana are not prepared to thrive in a rapidly evolving economy. And that fact could have devastating consequences for the state and its citizens.
In response, the Central Indiana Corporate Partnership recently launched a new effort to bridge the gap between workers’ skill levels and employers’ need for talent. Called Ascend Indiana and led by former Indianapolis Deputy Mayor Jason Kloth, the initiative is designed to identify employers’ needs, connect workers with training programs and build pipelines that funnel trained workers to employers.
Kloth said that he wants Ascend to be practical in its approach, especially when it comes to matching prospective workers with businesses searching for talent.
That practicality will be essential for the initiative’s success. Past efforts to improve the skill levels of Indiana’s workforce too often have been ineffective because they failed to connect with community leaders and with potential workers at the grassroots level.
What obstacles keep those already in the workforce from pursuing more education? Why don’t more students enroll in math and science courses so they can gain skills needed to land better-paying jobs? How can employers more effectively communicate their expectations to students and prospective workers?
If Ascend can help answer those questions, and press for ways to address such roadblocks, it will meet an enormous need for millions of Hoosiers and for businesses throughout the state.
Closing the skills gap is a critical need. No less than the prosperity of millions of Hoosiers and of the state we call home is at stake.