Rebuilding America starts with businesses
By Kalea Hall
WARREN
It’s going to take a long time to rebuild the nation’s and the area’s “middle-skills” gap, says a noted Harvard Business School lecturer.
And it starts with the businesses going out and addressing the issue, he added.
“Employers have to accept that they have to lead the solution,” said Joseph Fuller, a senior lecturer at the Harvard Business School. “You cannot expect [educators] to create qualified workers just out of the blue.”
Fuller was the first speaker in the “Rebuilding America” lecture series sponsored by the Youngstown/Warren Regional Chamber, Mahoning Valley Manufacturers Coalition, Youngstown State University, Oh-Penn Manufacturing Collaborative and Advanced Manufacturing Industry Partnership.
The series was created to encourage business leaders, educators and policy makers to address America’s middle-skills gap.
Manufacturers in the area and elsewhere have a difficult time finding employees for the middle-skills jobs they offer. These are jobs that require more than a high-school diploma but less than a college degree. Although there is a struggle to fill these jobs, there also is an underemployment and employment struggle.
Fuller said at Wednesday’s lecture at Kent State University at Trumbull the Ohio-Pennsylvania region is ground zero for the skills problems in the U.S. because of the region’s history in manufacturing.
“When a bunch of these industries started to lose share, lose global market position, they had overly large workforces who got older together, but they didn’t leave their jobs,” Fuller explained. “You didn’t have replenishment of young people coming into the system because they had too many and they didn’t need any more.”
The MVMC already has started to tackle the problem and continually works with area schools to help create a workforce that has the skills employers need. The coalition, made up of local employers and educators, has members hosting internship programs and others speaking at schools.
“The type of institutions like the MVMC are exactly the steps we need to take to address the problems,” Fuller said. “We took 35 years to get into this mess, and it’s going to take a long time to get us out of this.”
Fuller highlighted the need for employers to spend time investing in workforce suppliers, and, likewise, educators need to form a supply-chain partnership with employers.
“The skills gap is a multifaceted issue,” said Jessica Borza, MVMC executive director. “We haven’t solved everything. We’ve made some progress. It is a multifaceted problem so it is solved in a multifaceted way.”
“Rebuilding America Part 2: Bringing Jobs Back to the USA” will take place June 23 with Tim Hutzel as the keynote speaker. Hutzel has 50 years of experience in manufacturing, general business and management.