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Connecticut’s workforce
Once a source of pride, the skills of Connecticut's workforce
is falling behind the demands of business
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Business New Haven
10/6/1997
By: BNH
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In the hearts of nearly all business and political leaders lies the desire to invigorate the state's flagging economy. To do this, all agree, requires a skilled and motivated workforce.
Will the state's supply of labor be able to meet the challenges of an information-based economy that offers few of the old paternalistic assurances of job security and paid-for benefits? While economic health is still defined in terms of “recovery,” experts agree that the state's commercial future is
evolving into a wholly new life form - distinctly different from what it was back in pre-recession days.
Industries such as banking, insurance and defense no longer fuel the job creation as they once did. Hopes that high-tech companies would somehow take up the slack have not, so far at least, been realized.
On the labor side of the equation, the problem seems to be one of nature or nurture. Some in the business community say the state's pool of labor is simply not up to snuff - lacking the skills employers demand. Others insist that it is the responsibility of business to cultivate viable employees and to continually re-train and re-tool them.
“Economic growth is concentrated not so much in labor-intensive but capital-intensive industry segments. Employers are likely to maintain a core workforce and concentrate on maximizing productivity rather than hiring new labor,” says economist Don Klepper-Smith, president of the Middletown-based DataCore Partners.
This trend has contributed to Connecticut's ranking fifth in the country for highest rate of out-migration, particularly of young people who are not finding the job opportunities they seek. “According to Allied Van Lines,” notes Klepper-Smith, “57 percent of shipments are outbound. There are still more people leaving than coming in, and many of them are going to places like Seattle, Atlanta and the Carolinas.”
But what about those who stay behind? Are they the fittest survivors - or the downwardly immobile? Explains Klepper-Smith: “The workforce is getting older. By 2020 there will be roughly double the number of people in the state between the ages of 55-74 than there are now. It is a real concern for economists that a lot of the people who can make robust growth happen will be sitting in other parts of the country.”
And they will more than likely be paying less for their dwellings, since Connecticut housing costs remain 15 percent above the national average.
Not only does it cost more for workers to live in the state, but their wages have barely kept pace with hikes in the cost of living, which averages three percent annually. This is reflected in the prevailing buyer's market for labor in most sectors.
Many managers, administrators and technicians once employed by Electric Boat or Travelers are now working in the booming casino industry. Klepper-Smith observes: “Five percent unemployment is really not a good barometer of Connecticut's economic vitality. Under-employment continues to be a major problem across the state. People who have given up looking for work are not included in the statistics, and neither are the quality of jobs.”
Klepper-Smith says all workers need to understand that employability is inevitably tied to one's ability to create added value for somebody else.
According to projections for the year 2005 from the Office of Research at the state's Department of Labor, job growth is expected for health-care workers, salespeople, waitresses, computer-related employees, teachers and maintenance workers. “There is some demand among small manufacturers, too, for skilled workers and many are voicing concern that they are not able to find the labor they need within the state,” says Joseph Slepski, research analyst for the Department of Labor.
“Due to rapidly changing manufacturing technologies, people are reluctant to train for jobs that may not continue to be around,” Slepski adds. “In addition to the uncertainty about job availability and security, technical school students are discouraged by the low entry-level wages paid by the smaller manufacturers: $7 or $8 an hour as opposed to Pratt & Whitney's $15 or $16 an hour.”
However, some manufacturers believe that the problem is due more to the scant supply of skilled labor rather than to stagnant wages or rapidly changing technologies.
“Manufacturing is in better shape now than we've been in years,” says Roger Joyce, president of the West Haven-based Bilco Corp. and incoming chairman of the Greater New Haven Chamber of Commerce. “State-of-the-art in a lot of our equipment is ten to 15 years old. Cutting, shearing, bending, and welding continue to generate demand, and few of these skills are coming out of the voc-tech schools. At Eli Whitney, only 12 percent of the graduates are going into manufacturing.”
Joyce believes that the state's workforce must develop a much broader and flexible range of skills. The shop floor now requires line people to have basic computer as well as technical competencies.
“We need better coordination and consolidation of the state and federal training programs,” Joyce says. “And the voc-tech system needs to realize that their customer is business and industry - not the person they're training.”
While manufacturers seek to address spot labor shortages, health care is widely cited as the most valuable player on the job-creation court. Here are good jobs at livable wages and opportunities for career development - yet many in the ranks of the available labor pool fail to qualify.
“There's an employment drought in the areas we want to fill,” explains Ellen Andrews, Yale-New Haven Hospital's director of staffing and recruitment. “Specialty nursing such as emergency room and critical-care nurses, both pediatric and adult, are in tremendous demand. There are lots of new graduates coming out of the nursing schools as fully qualified RNs, but without the necessary experience. We have to aggressively recruit all over the country and will be doing a lot more on the Internet.”
Yale-New Haven's re-engineering completed two years ago resulted in the redesign of all direct patient-care jobs throughout the organization. The hospital and has raised the bar of what it expects from all of its employees.
Patients are admitted now in more acute conditions and must be treated more efficiently - in less time and at lower cost. Personnel at all levels increasingly must exercise sound judgment and effective communications skills. For example, hospital housekeepers have become “environmental associates,” and the change in job title is not merely nominal.
“Multiple skills are essential,” notes Andrews. “Computer literacy, communications skills, being a team player, problem solving and critical thinking are absolutely essential for every job.”
Andrews, who is responsible for staffing all of the hospital's positions with the exception of physicians, sees streams of local and regional applicants lacking the basic set of required skills: reading, writing, computation and dependability. And most of these applicants are holders of public high-school diplomas.
Among the 150-200 jobs the hospital tries to fill each month are openings for pharmacists and information-systems specialists. Locally, Yale-New Haven has to compete with large pharmaceutical firms which recruit pharmacists at much higher wages for their sales and research areas.
There is a continual need for computer technicians who are adept at designing and operating multi-site networks and Internet usage across a large health-care system such as Yale-New Haven's. Andrews is hopeful that the hospital's recent partnership with New Haven Schools Superintendent Reginald Mayo in community outreach initiatives such as school-career programs at New Haven's public high schools, will help to match hospital jobs with local job-seekers. Similar training and screening projects are also in place at the West Rock Development Corp.
Most leaders, from President Bill Clinton to the chamber's Roger Joyce, view public investment in education and training as vital and capable of bearing fruit. But on the ground, in Joyce's view, “a more rational approach is needed.”
There is a perception in the businesses community that the 70-odd programs now operated with public funds need improved coordination, management and better attunement to the specific needs of employers.
“Better coordinated programs and funds now available for public programs being redirected to private initiatives will ensure that proper skills are being taught,” adds Joyce. “Other states will do it - and are doing it.”
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