Lack of skilled workers, training may slow St. Louis recovery
More than 90 percent of St. Louis area businesses plan to either hire new workers or maintain current employment levels during the next 12 months.
At the same time, there is genuine concern among employers that a shortage of skilled workers and training programs may hamper hiring across the region as St. Louis emerges from the recession.
The findings are contained in the "State of St. Louis Workforce Report," a survey of 1,537 employers and 447 dislocated workers that state and local officials say provides a much-needed glimpse at regional, postrecession employment.
"This is the tip of the iceberg; it gives us a beginning picture of what we need to look for," said Michael Holmes, executive director of the St. Louis Agency on Training and Employment.
Much of the data he relies on, Holmes said, predate the recession.
The survey’s researchers determined that employers used several alternatives to layoffs to weather the downturn, including reducing the hours of existing employees, freezing payroll, payroll reductions and suspension of subsidies for retirement benefits.
Meanwhile, of the employers surveyed, 23 percent said they would increase employment over the next year. Sixty-eight percent plan to maintain current payroll levels and 9 percent expect to decrease their work force.
Holmes, along with representatives of the St. Louis County Career Center and St. Louis Community College will officially release the report Thursday.
In it, 30 percent of the area’s employers blame the economy for reductions in payroll.
But 23 percent of employers cited a lack of skilled workers and inadequate training programs as a "barrier" to new hiring. And that has grabbed the attention of officials.
"It’s important to remember that the skill gaps that existed before the downturn continue," said Roderick Nunn, vice chancellor for work force development at St. Louis Community College.
To improve opportunities for finding new and better jobs, the report says the growth industries in the next year will be educational services, health care, retail and manufacturing. That, the report says, is where job-hunters need to get training immediate payday loans online.
"The key challenge is recalibrating business and education and supply and demand for what employers need in very specific terms," said Dick Fleming, president and CEO of the St. Louis Regional Chamber and Growth Association.
Gene Gorden, executive director of the St. Louis County Workforce Development Career Centers, also stressed the importance of training in clean energy, information technology and biotechnology.
"The training institutions have to be in tune and listening to those businesses," Gorden said.
Another question that needs to be addressed, said Holmes, is determining whether the responsibility for retraining lies with the public sector, the private sector or a combination.
On the flip side, the survey looks at some of the obstacles that prevent displaced workers from learning new job skills.
Chief among those are time and money: Unemployed workers need to find jobs now to support their families, rather than invest time in retraining. And even if they could afford the time, they might not have the money.
Programs that prepare workers for a transition into expanding health care fields, the report pointed out, are examples of training regimens demanding commitments of extended time and money.
The survey’s interviews with unemployed workers at career centers on both the Missouri and Illinois sides of the Mississippi River revealed a detailed portrait of the 128,000 area residents the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates were out of a job in May. (June statistics will be released on Wednesday.)
The report found 53 percent of the region’s jobless are male and 47 percent female.
Nearly half, 48 percent, said they had been out of work for more than six months.
A third have a high school diploma and another 25 percent had completed some college.
Fleming noted that no economic sector has evaded damage during the downturn.
Therein, he said, lies the report’s real value.