Providing willing workers with higher skills pays off

Columbus Dispatch: Ohio suffers from a significant job mismatch: Hundreds of thousands of people remain stuck in low-wage, low-skill jobs while better jobs go unfilled because employers can’t find people with the expertise to fill them. That makes two recent Dispatch stories about training and workforce development especially good news.

One revealed a remarkable opportunity for people to, after 15 weeks of intensive class and lab work, be vaulted into IT careers with unlimited potential.

Because of the aforementioned jobs gap, a number of tech “boot camp” programs operate in central Ohio, offering intensive, short-term training. All likely are valuable but Per Scholas, affiliated with a New York City-based nonprofit, is different: It’s free to students, and it’s reserved for people who need it the most.

Funding Per Scholas in Columbus has been a good move by the Franklin County Board of Commissioners. The county’s $300,000 over the past three years paid for 150 people to complete the course, and graduates typically go from jobs paying $10,000 per year to jobs that start at more than $30,000.

That kind of hand up benefits the individual and taxpayers through higher wages (and income-tax revenues), less reliance on Medicaid and other public services and an immeasurably brighter future.

To be eligible for Per Scholas training, applicants must be unemployed or working only part-time or seasonally in a job that has low pay. Receiving benefits such as unemployment insurance or Medicaid might also qualify someone.

Future success

They also have to be capable and driven. Not necessarily proven scholars; they need a high-school diploma or its equivalent, but past performance, as they say in investment commercials, is not necessarily an indicator of future success. Many Per Scholas students are people who didn’t discover their capacity for learning and hard work until life demanded it of them.

The Per Scholas curriculum is challenging and fast-moving. Classes are full-time in the daytime, five days per week. While it is an ideal way to satisfy a work requirement for food stamps or other aid, for people who need to have other income during the training, the Per Scholas schedule could be a barrier.

That’s where another initiative – JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s plan to spend $350 million over five years around the world to help workers prepare for jobs of the future – comes in.

Chase officials say much of that money will be spread around to community colleges (including Columbus State) and other education and training programs. Alternatives to 4-year degrees are an important part of matching willing workers with the skills employers need.

They’re quicker, they cost less and they can easily adapt to changing needs and technologies. They also tend to be offered in flexible formats, including nights, weekends and online.

In fact, a significant chunk of the Chase investment – $125 million – will go expressly to make such training programs even smarter in the future by developing better collaboration and communication among employers and the institutions and programs trying to supply them with the employees they need.

Central Ohio is fortunate to have plenty of entry-level job opportunities and institutions like Columbus State and Per Scholas offering the training required to do them. And as Chase knows, connecting the jobless or underemployed with the right training and the right job is an investment with lasting returns.