Workforce Development Sees Boost in Support from all Sides

Last month, President Trump issued an Executive order in which he discussed the state of the American workforce and the rapid advancement of technology. In his executive order he called for the establishment of the President’s National Council for the American Worker, citing the need to “provide a coordinated process for developing a national strategy to ensure that America’s students and workers have access to affordable, relevant, and innovative education and job training that will equip them to compete and win in the global economy, and for monitoring the implementation of that strategy…”

This Executive Order is consistent with President Trump’s ongoing support for bolstering science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). Earlier this year he instructed Department of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to include STEM in the Education Department’s priorities for the fiscal year, and recently signed into law the Perkins Career and Technical Education Reauthorization Act that provides significant support to STEM. This dedication to STEM was also evident in the White House’s most recent FY19 Research and Development Priorities.

As the State Science and Technology Institute noted, this need to bolster the American workforce and provide comprehensive training programs was also recently explained in a new report from the National Skills Coalition (NSC), titled Powerful Partners: Businesses and Community Colleges. In its report, the NSC explains that roughly 53% of jobs on the labor market are “middle-skill”, meaning workers need qualifications beyond a high-school diploma, but not necessarily a college degree. However, despite over half the jobs on the market receiving this classification, only 43% percent of workers currently have the necessarily qualifications leaving employers with a dearth of suitable workers to choose from.

To help address this problem, the National Skills Coalition calls on Congress in their new report, to increase federal investment in private-public partnerships. The positive correlation between strong support in these partnerships and a bolstered workforce are highlighted in further support of their position.

To view President Trump’s Executive Order, click here: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-establishing-presidents-national-council-american-worker/

To view the National Skills Coalition’s report, click here: https://www.nationalskillscoalition.org/resources/publications/file/Powerful-Partners-Businesses-and-Community-Colleges.pdf