How to Build a Stronger Workforce:
A Cross Sector Perspective

Transcript

Tameshia Bridges Mansfield: 

Today we're talking about cross-sector collaborations, ensuring that diverse voices are heard as leaders work together to pave pathways to good jobs for all Americans. Nearly two-thirds of Americans do not have a four-year college degree, and millions of older adults lost jobs, forcing them to seek out new opportunities as a result of the pandemic. Bringing all of those workers into sustainable employment and out of low-wage debt-end jobs can only help our economy. 

Welcome to the Horizons Podcast, where we take the inspiring discussions from the stage at Jobs for the Future's annual Horizons summit and invite a special guest to help us move that conversation forward. I'm your host, Tameshia Bridges Mansfield. Today, we will be joined by a special guest, Anthony Carnevale, research professor and director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. But first, let's head to Horizons, where moderator Steve Lohr from the New York Times leaves a panel of experts, including Emily Allen, senior vice president, programs for the AARP Foundation, and Joseph Fuller, a professor at Harvard Business School and a senior fellow at the Burning Glass Institute. 

Steven directs his first question to Dr. Michael Baston. Baston is currently president of the Cuyahoga Community College, but at the time of this discussion, he was president of Rockland Community College. Baston has been pushing the nation's 1100 community colleges to become increasingly efficient escalators to middle class careers for more and more Americans. Let's listen in. 

Steve Lohr: 

He said in the past that associate degrees can't be, as you put it, paths to nowhere, you've emphasized [inaudible] to working with local businesses, sussing out the skills the local companies need. And it strikes me that if you look at the really successful community colleges and some of the very successful workforce development programs, what you see is essentially kind of building efficient local labor markets and the job of the community college president, as you are, is as much market maker as educator. So, I mean, talk about that a little and what community colleges are moving from and to. 

Michael Baston: 

Well, I think when you think about the development of the community college movement in America, this idea of democracy and promoting it in many ways, working alongside business and industry to more fully integrate opportunities for people in the local community is critical. But we have to be able to do this in partnership with our local business and industry leaders. So, it is important for us not to simply put together programs that lead students on bridges to nowhere, but that we actually have to work with our business and industry partners to identify the opportunities and to also ensure that we are going to help diversify the labor market. We know that too many Americans are stranded assets, so much talent, so much potential, but ultimately disconnected from the opportunity ecosystem. 

So, as a community college president, working with business and industry, working with hospital administrators to look at the shortages, to work with their HR departments to identify those areas, skill gaps that have to be met, how do we use even shorter-term credential opportunities to build ladders to greater opportunities and economic wealth for members of the community long-term? So, community colleges play a very critical role in being that critical connector with business industry, our four-year partners, partners in government, we can really be that change agent. 

Steve Lohr: 

Just to follow up, can you give us an example of a program or initiative that you think is either particularly encouraging or directional about where things need to go? 

Michael Baston: 

Sure. I can tell you about the way in which we're working with health care. You think about many of the frontline workers in America, they're trained in community colleges. And so, we are working, for example, at Rockland with the local hospitals to develop new pathways for EMTs, new pathways for paramedics, new pathways not just nursing, but in all critical care support services. And then the ladders for different opportunities within hospitals. Because it's not just health care, hospitals need food prep folks. They need folks that are going to service the ambulance. You need all of the computer people, the accountants. And so, really ensuring that the college becomes a partner in sort of talent development in all aspects of businesses. But health care is a very specific example that's happening in my community. 

Steve Lohr: 

Joe, let's try you next. What have you found that's been either most striking or surprising in your research? 

Joe Fuller: 

I think my biggest surprise was the consistency with which companies have an incomplete understanding of their own economics. I'll just give you a quick illustration from some of my recent work. A lot of companies think or act as if having a high churn rate in their lower-wage workers is actually biblical, it's an edict from the almighty. So, they anticipate that frontline retail workers, frontline hospitality workers are going to turn over to high rate. So, if you make that assumption, what's an intelligent decision for the employer? Job design's got to be pretty simple because it's got to be doable by newcomers. So, people with very little experience have to be able to do an adequate job of it. What's the follow-on assumption? Well, the job's not going to be very productive, so I'm not going to pay very well and makes no sense to invest in the skills of someone who's going to leave within a year. So, therefore, you have this super cycle with 44% of American workers in jobs below 200% of the poverty line. 

When you look at actual data, what it says is that the low-wage workers turn over because they have low wages and little up prospect of advancement. So, if I can get a job that pays about the same, two bus stops closer to home, if I'm taking mass transit or with for 25 cents or 50 more cents an hour, why wouldn't I because I'm in a dead-end job. And that when you give low-wage workers opportunities to grow, add skills, have some prospect of advancement, whether that advancement takes place in the enterprise or by jumping into another career through skills developed in that first job, they want to stay. So, when you talk to those employers, their entire understanding of the systems and the policies and choices that derive from those are based on incomplete understanding of their own economics. The same thing with caregiving. They don't understand the extent to which caregiving concerns drive voluntary turnover asymmetrically in your top quartile of your workforce in terms of wages and title. That's just another wide spot. And I could go on and on, but then a seminar would break out and I'd have to charge you all tuition. 

Tameshia Bridges Mansfield: 

Welcome back to our studio. I'm now joined by special guest, Anthony Carnevale, research professor and director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. Tony, thank you for joining us for this important conversation. 

Anthony Carnevale: 

Thank you for having me. 

Tameshia Bridges Mansfield: 

So, we're here to carry the conversation forward, but I think in order to do that, we need to look backward a bit. So, can we talk a bit about how we got here and what were the key education and career training practices and collaborations that really prepared a solid workforce in the past, and how have they broken down in recent years? 

Anthony Carnevale: 

Well, let me begin with a story looking to the past that I think still defines the training conversation, and that is in the Carter administration. I worked on the hill, and I was part of a group that put together the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act. It was intended to create a whole new capability in American life to do training as opposed to education. The story I want to tell you is that I went with my boss at Muskie up to Maine. He was a prominent politician in those times, and we spoke before a group of shipbuilders who were always in danger of losing their job because southern senators kept stealing the budget. But in the end, the senator gave a long speech about our new Comprehensive Employment and Training Act, which was going to change America. And what I remember about that most, and it was a lesson learned by him, me, and eventually everybody else, and that is that as we were walking off the stage, we didn't get much applause, and these people loved this guy. 

So, he bent over and said to me... Because he was about six foot four and I'm five seven, he bent over and said to me, "We just told them they're fired." And in the end, the lesson in that which everybody learned, and it was the demise of the training agenda, and the federal government actually, CETA was a political fiasco. And what we learned was, you can't sell training to grownups. If you're over 40 and you have a job, the last thing you want to hear is that you're going to get training because that means you're going to be fired. So, nobody's ever since attempted to sell training to grownups because what they want to hear about is jobs. Now that has been the case since the Carter years. The Department of Labor basically lost its big chance to be a training provider. They've limped along ever since. 

But if they were funded at the level of the initial funding for Carter's Comprehensive Employment and Training Act, they'd be getting about that is WIOA, which is what CETA is called now, would be getting about $35 billion more a year than it gets at the moment. So, the only reason it's survived at all is that if you're a politician, if you're in the Senate, you're going to get a phone call. If you try to zero out WIOA, take all the money away for training, you're going to get a phone call from the governor. You're going to get a phone call from the county exec. Employers have joined in advocating for training, and there is bipartisan support for a training Pell Grant that is a higher education grant for training. And it is somewhat inevitable. It's already past the house. So, where we are now is there is broad-based agreement, bipartisan agreement, that we need to put training into the post-secondary education system and make it the post-secondary education and training system. So, training for young people is cool. Training for grownups is decidedly not cool. 

Tameshia Bridges Mansfield: 

Tony, you mentioned the importance of workforce training supported by WIOA, the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, that's overseen by the U.S. Department of Labor. On stage at Horizons, we had representatives from Harvard Business School and Rockland Community College, both expressing the importance of investment in more equitably rebuilding education and training for learners and workers. So, given the historical challenges that you've outlined, how do we prioritize these investments so older workers are considered, along with the young? 

Anthony Carnevale: 

In the end, the skill shortages have driven the employers to want training. So, there is a resurgence in training. The education community is opposed to training because it ain't Shakespeare. So, the higher ed community is absolutely opposed to the training Pell Grant and aggressively so. I think in the end, the answer here is that the training money that will go to community colleges and not-for-profit institutions, and before it's over, I think the for-profits will get back into the game. Although they need to be tightly controlled. That training will be available for adults as well. Now, the question is, will the community colleges recruit adults? Now, that's not where they make their money, and we'll see. But I think the shortages are the key here, because we're going to have shortages because of the infrastructure law, and there's reason to believe that we're going to have continuous shortages of skilled workers in America going forward because our birth rates have plummeted and our workforce is no longer growing. 

Tameshia Bridges Mansfield: 

I think that's an interesting political conundrum, and there's definitely a need for more solutions to worker shortages. One of the things that Joe Fuller talks about, and you raise as well, is that many employers don't understand their own economics and how this leads to a high turnover for workers, particularly in low-wage work. 

Anthony Carnevale: 

The employer institutions a huge trainer in American life. They've always have been. I would make an educated guess that they spend about $60 billion a year on formal training. They spend another $180 billion a year on formal on-the-job training. It is true that in many cases, the best trainer is the job. In the end, employers have an incentive to train the most skilled workers because the return on training skilled workers is much higher than the return on training unskilled workers. The issue with employers now that you're beginning to see is that, say, McDonald's, Starbucks, lots of institutions, they have become more and more acquisitive of people who stay on the job. 

They don't want people leaving 'cause that costs money. They got to go find somebody else, rehire them, retrain them, et cetera, et cetera. So, what they're offering is education. So, you get McDonald's, Starbucks, everybody's in the game now, and one of the benefits you use to get young, relatively unskilled workers who will stay on the job, is you give them an education benefit. And that is now rampant in the American economy. That Americans, we have become a society where you have to have a piece of paper to get a job, usually a degree, a certification, something work experience matters. But that piece of paper is what really matters. And in the end, that is a problem. 

Tameshia Bridges Mansfield: 

What is your sense of how the pandemic has shifted interest in investment and value of training for adult workers and learners outside of the political landscape? 

Anthony Carnevale: 

Well, the pandemic created a population of footloose and fancy-free workers, that is the recovery from the pandemic created a lot of job openings. So, what's happened is there has been a mass movement, the great resignation, it's often called, there's been a mass movement of lower wage, lower-skilled workers moving from job to job. Now, the inflation that we are facing in the economy takes away all of the value of that increased wage. I mean, everybody's getting a raise, but inflation is bigger than the raise. So, you're really not making progress. But we're seeing a massive shift of people who are finding job openings because of COVID. The longer-term issue is to what extent are we going to need to train less skilled workers? And I think it's pretty clear we do. 

Tameshia Bridges Mansfield: 

Well. Let's head back to the stage at Horizons where the conversation continues with moderator, Steve Lohr and Emily Allen, senior vice president, programs for the AARP Foundation. 

Steve Lohr: 

I'm really interested in your area. I mean, in writing about kind of the programs that work. Typically, their wheelhouse is 18 to 25, 35 tops, right? That's wiping off a fair part of the workforce, obviously, right? You go to an employer, make the argument for why they should employ somebody 50 or older as opposed to hiring somebody who's 25? 

Emily Allen: 

How? Well good question. As I look around the room, my guess is a lot of us are in that over 50 category.  

Steve Lohr: 

Yeah, nobody would hire us. That's for sure. 

Emily Allen: 

So, in some ways, I've been in this space for a long time, and I was thinking back, I think it was 2005, 2006 that AARP first did a study on the business case for hiring workers over 50. Good idea at the time, learned a lot obviously from that, looking at higher retention rates, loyalty. At the time, we were using terms like more loyal and things like that, which actually pitted the older adult worker against the younger worker. And that's something that I've really fought against since that time. I don't think it's said an either-or, it's got to be a both. So, I think the report was good at the time, we were really trying to engage employers because one of the biggest things we would hear is, "Oh, well, I don't want to hire older workers because they're getting ready to retire or they're going to cost me more in health care." 

And we found that marginally higher health care costs. But if you compared a 50-year-old marathon runner with a 25-year-old smoker, maybe not so much. And so, a multi-generational workforce is really the healthiest and most competitive workforce for all employers across every industry. We know that people are living longer, working longer, and older adults have huge buying power. And so, whether you're a retailer or a health care provider, whatever, it's so critically important to have workers that mirror your customer and client base. So, when you think about someone who is 50, they likely have a 20-year career left, so they're almost a mid-career worker. What we used to consider kind of a mid-career worker. Like I said earlier, let's start challenging some of those outdated stereotypes that an older worker is someone with one foot in retirement, who doesn't want advancement opportunities, who shouldn't be enrolled in that management training with their employer because it's simply quite not the truth. 

Tameshia Bridges Mansfield: 

Welcome back to our studio. I'm joined again by special guest Tony Carnevale, research professor and director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. Tony, I've appreciated your perspective in terms of the political dynamics and realities around re-skilling and up-skilling older workers. I'd be interested in hearing more about the practical and on-the-ground solutions around how we can have the right collaborations to allow for adult workers to access more skilled training. And I'm particularly interested in the growth of middle-skills jobs and your thoughts on where we are as an ecosystem and an economy. 

Anthony Carnevale: 

The bottom line here is that the only way this is going to happen, and it is happening, is that first of all, we need to make the education and training system transparent and accountable, and the government is moving rapidly at both the national level and the state level to do that because they're tired of paying for education and training that doesn't get people jobs. So, what we're seeing is we now know, I now know because the data's there, if you give me any program in any post-secondary education or training institution that is in receipt of federal funds at all, before you choose to take that program, I can tell you what happened to everybody else who took that program before you. That's where we're going. No one is going to drop a whole lot of money on training or education going forward unless the system is transparent and accountable. 

The way the politics work on that, if you're an elected official, the way the politics work is you don't want to tell people they can't take anthropology. So, if you talk about transparency and accountability and somebody, and I've been in this room where somebody raises their hand and says, "What if I want to major in anthropology? There are no jobs for anthropologists, so are you going to not give me federal aid or training money or whatever?" And the politician's answer learned in the last several years is, "Of course we're going to give you federal money, but we're going to tell you before you take that program what happened to everybody else who took that program before you." And as Barack Obama said, and then had to make a formal apology, "If you decide to take art history, that's your problem." 

Tameshia Bridges Mansfield: 

Yeah, and I do think, I'm a liberal arts major myself, so there's that, but I do think what you said about the need for greater transparency and accountability in the system is true, and I think that is a definite place that we're moving both in the post-secondary college space as well as in the community college space for their workforce training programs as well as within the short-term credential space too. I think there is this greater hunger and need for understanding what the outcomes are of those trainings, particularly as it relates to jobs both for payers into the system and for employers and also for workers and learners to navigate and make better, more informed and rational choices about their education. 

Anthony Carnevale: 

We built the K-12 education system that is entirely academic. We threw out VOCA after the 1983 Nation at Risk report and made K-12 education all academic ending up with trying to get past algebra two, which is a problem for a lot of people. You go along and you give everybody a solid academic education, you increase high school graduation, you increase college going, but you still end up with a bunch of kids who graduate from high school and end up on the street with nowhere to go, which is why training as education policy is getting stronger and stronger and will pass. 

We've already passed... In the House of Representatives a few months ago, we passed a bill that said there was going to be a training Pell Grant and that it had to meet a 20% value added standard. That is if you took a training program that had any federal money, if you could get federal aid for the program, then you could only get federal aid if the program increased your earnings by 20%, which is to say they're telling the community colleges, "We won't fund anything that doesn't deliver 20% in wages." 

Tameshia Bridges Mansfield: 

That is an interesting take. Thank you for that. As we return to Horizons, the conversation turns to the subject of scaling, how to extend the reach of effective programming once it is identified. New York Times reporter Steve Lohr asks the question. 

Steve Lohr: 

Let's just start with Michael actually. One of the subjects of this conference is supposed to be unquote scaling, and one of the things that strikes me at least is that this is, pun intended, a very labor-intensive process. It's not like software. Invented and the marginal cost of production is zero. When people in Silicon Valley talk about scaling, that's what they're talking about. But what do we mean by scaling and what would help in scaling things out? 

Michael Baston: 

As you think about the partnerships that I've talked about, that Emily's talked about, that Joe have talked about, it really is developing the frameworks that then can be shared and the best practices communicated so that we can replicate the good work together. How do we build effective collaborations? How do we build win-win propositions? How do we ensure that not only are we working with folks that are currently in the system, but who's not invited to the conversation, who's not being engaged effectively in the opportunity ecosystem? It is important for us to recognize, even in the community college space, that we don't just have those traditional students right out of high school that are coming into the community college. We have the older adult who is coming back to the college to learn to grow. I'm getting one of those cards now. I just turned 57. 

Emily Allen: 

Probably got one back in the- 

Michael Baston: 

Get one of those cards myself. It's important for us to recognize, and I've mentioned it earlier today, that we can leave no American behind with opportunities to get into a work situation, particularly with the demographic drought that we are facing. And so, making sure that we are more connected to one another in very intentional ways and to replicate the best practices of those connections are going to be essential if we are going to move our country forward. 

Steve Lohr: 

And this kind of moves I think a point Joyce made, it's about replication. It's not national programs necessarily. Emily, what in your world would make a difference? 

Emily Allen: 

So, we want to make sure, to Michael's point, that a program can look really good. We're all guilty, AARP Foundation included, of building a solution and then going out and looking for a problem for it to solve because we tend to fall in love with solutions, be it a technology solution or a programmatic solution. So, let's work together to do the evaluation that we need, and maybe it's not that whole packaged program, but the components of that that then can be shared across and replicated. I think that's so critically important. And then with my philanthropy hat on, philanthropy can't solve this alone, which really is, to your point, Michael, bringing together and making sure that we have the various components of that ecosystem, that all important ecosystem. Workforce services can't do it alone. Nonprofits can't do it alone. Government can't do it alone. 

So, it's really important. One example that we're doing with a program that we've just launched called Digital Skills Ready, wonderful, generous grant from google.org, where we're really looking at what does it take to help older adults gain the technical skills that they need in order to get quality jobs in their community? And so, there's lots of digital programs or digital skills development programs out there, but we want to really dig into the evaluation to see for older adults what it takes, and then be able to replicate that through blueprints. Again, not let's build on programs that are already out there, but really identify who needs to be at the table, particularly economic development, workforce, all of those groups, key employers, and then really look at how do we implement the key components of what's working. 

Steve Lohr: 

One big change that would help you, each of you... I mean, this is they call the lightning round I say, but I mean it is a shift if you like to the attitude. Funding, whatever, incentives. Joe at Mercy. 

Joe Fuller: 

Significant national commitment to early work-based learning in high school. 

Michael Baston: 

In academia, we used to say publish or perish. I would say partner or perish. If we do not partner, we will perish. 

Emily Allen: 

I would say look at the table that you form or the groups that you have and figure out who's not there that needs to be there. 

Tameshia Bridges Mansfield: 

Welcome back to our studio. I'm joined again by special guest, Tony Carnevale, and I would just be curious to hear your thoughts from a solutions perspective in terms of what is possible? What do you think are the partnerships that we should be thinking about, that we should be promoting to really lift up people across a lifelong learning perspective to be able to connect people to the jobs that are the ones that are the most likely for people to have a level of economic advancement and success? 

Anthony Carnevale: 

Well, lifelong learning is a line in every politician's speech, but it's rarely a line in any public budget. Where the world is headed is that everybody has realized that the critical reform that we didn't make when we took vocational education out of K-12 was to find a way to connect our education system to the labor market. And we've been struggling ever since to do that. Essentially, we've been struggling to do that with lots of innovation, I would argue, breaking down the silos between high school, college, and careers. Now, at the end of the day, the hardest part of that is to get the employers on board. They don't want to recruit high school kids. So, they're happy to work with community colleges, but even so, employer involvement is always hard to get. They're very fickle. They're here today, gone tomorrow. And in the end, there's never enough of it to go around. 

So, getting American employers to commit to training people that they won't hire is damn near impossible. Yeah, the optimistic view in all of this is that first of all, people have figured out that it's all one system. You've got the governor of California running around saying he's going to build an education system from cradle-to-career, which everybody calls him a communist, but it's actually a very state-of-the-art idea. You got Joe Biden saying we're going to do preschool and we're going to add community college at the other end, basically extending the education system. So, there is some chance that people can get through the public system and actually be college and/or career ready. They aren't now. So, that's where we're headed is this all-systems view, which forces you to cut across institutions, especially in the education system, and to somehow get employers involved, especially once you hit post-secondary education and training. 

Tameshia Bridges Mansfield: 

Well, this has certainly been a unique perspective to help round out the podcast this season. I want to thank you, Tony, for adding your voice to this important conversation and for being a part of the discussion today. 

Anthony Carnevale: 

Yeah, thank you. 

Tameshia Bridges Mansfield: 

And thank you to our listeners for joining us for this episode of the Horizons Podcast. Please let us know what you thought about today's conversation by sharing a comment wherever you find your podcast, and we hope you will join us in person in New Orleans for our 2023 conference, Horizons, presented by JFF. The theme this year is Without Limits. I look forward to the conversation on our next podcast. For now, I'm your host, Tameshia Bridges Mansfield. 

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