Candidates Must Develop Plan For American Workers Based On Knowledge Economy

It is puzzling that during the past two presidential debates neither candidate has offered specifics about what he will do to help Americans get through these hard economic times.

Consider for example one of our most critical challenges -- how do we move Americans into jobs that pay family-supporting wages and provide health care.

The reality is the United States lacks a national workforce development policy to meet the needs of the 21st century. The presidential candidates must tell us during the next and final debate what they will do to ensure that America's workforce is poised to compete in the global economy.

Historically, our workforce development system has focused on getting people a job, usually at the entry level, with little regard for career advancement. This approach was appropriate for an industrial economy where jobs paid family sustaining wages and were accessible to those with limited education and credentials.

In today's global economy, however, the stakes are higher and the need for a highly-skilled workforce is greater. In fact, the story behind the recent announcement of record job losses is that there are jobs going unfilled because employers cannot find workers with the advanced skills to fill them.

The U.S. Department of Labor estimates that in just four years there will be a shortage of more than 10 million skilled workers. By the year 2014, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of jobs requiring some form of post-secondary training or education will grow 60 percent faster than the job market as a whole.

Yet policymakers and elected officials at the federal level have failed to recognize that while job training may have worked in the industrial economy, the knowledge economy requires a different approach that focuses on workforce development.

The last time Congress addressed this issue was a decade ago, when it passed the Workforce Investment Act (WIA) that merged a myriad of existing job training programs to create one-stop training centers to help adults, youths and dislocated workers find jobs.

The Act expired in 2003 and has yet to be reauthorized, though Congress has funded its programs on a year to year catch-as-catch-can basis, without authorization. (In FY07, the funding level for WIA programs was approximately $3 billion.)

The federal government's lack of attention to this issue shows just how little Washington is focused on helping Americans re-tool their career skills that lead to careers that pay a family-supporting wage with the opportunity of advancement.

According to a report by The Workforce Alliance, Training Policy in Brief: An Overview of Federal Workforce Development Policies 2007, the federal government spent slightly over $50 billion in FY06 on programs categorized as workforce development. This money is spread out over six federal agencies and includes funding for Pell Grants at $13 billion and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) at $16.5 billion.

Given the budget challenges facing the next president, the federal government will need to make do with current resources by finding more efficient and creative ways to re-tool existing funding.

While both presidential candidates recognize that our current policies with regard to workforce development are broken, there has been little talk on the campaign trail about how exactly they plan to fix the current system.

A glimpse into how Senator McCain would tackle this challenge can be found in his Jobs for America briefing paper. Senator McCain advocates reforming the unemployment insurance system to focus on retraining workers; foresees a bigger role for community colleges in re-training workers; and the need to help older workers stay in the workforce.

Senator Obama advocates making the research and development tax credit permanent to help create high-paying, secure jobs that will result in long-term investments in education, training, and workforce development. Recognizing that developing new clean technologies will require a highly-skilled manufacturing workforce, Senator Obama supports job training initiatives that will train Americans to fill these high-paying jobs. Finally, Senator Obama proposes investing $1 billion over five years in transitional jobs and career pathway programs that will help low-income Americans succeed in the workforce. More information about Senator Obama's plan can be found here.

What's missing is what both candidates would do to re-align current federal programs that focus on "job training" and re-program those funds into initiatives that focus on "workforce development."

This country needs a 21st century jobs program. One that recognizes we have moved from an industrial economy to a knowledge economy and that our federal policies need to reflect that change. In the next and final debate, the candidates should tell us how they plan to get us there.

Comments

[Capo123]

Julian's timely prescriptions on workforce development in the US echo in the Middle East and North Africa, where the youth unemployment rate is the world's highest.

Employment is the source of self-respect, dignity and hope-- as well as livelihood.

What if the US had expended some if its Iraq war funds for job creation instead of handing the bulk of it to the military and its contractors? We might today be seeing kids in Baghdad carrying briefcases instead of Kalashnikovs.

Let's hope that the next US President will support policies to promote jobs for youth in the volatile MENA region.

[PatrickforO]

To answer SailFree's question, our government must be involved because business is crying out for it, telling government that they need help with increasingly acute shortages of high-skilled labor. Consider David Halberstam's 1988 book, The Reckoning - a little dated now, but it addressed how Japan took away major market share points from Detroit because of both good quality control, and because the Japanese government intervened to make it easier for Japanese industries to compete globally. The Toyota Camry is now the best selling sedan in the USA. Think about that for a minute. Now, think about all the American companies laying off workers, and the high drop out rates. We are wasting all those people, and the free market is neither able nor willing to do the training needed to help these people get back to work, which I remind you benefits us all. Prosperous local economies help everyone because everyone contributes.

[SailFree]

Why pray tell must government become involved in private decisions? Do bureaucrats know more than companies and employees? Has government meddling in schools improved education or destroyed it? Did government meddling in mortgages make them safer or disastrous?

Why SHOULD government become involved in such decisions?

[kdallas999]

Workforce Development is CRITCAL to the success of our country. And it has to be lead by our government - no single company can be responsible for the overall knowledge-base of our country.
The United States has been the most strong when our government has lead efforts in modernizing workforce - creating thousands of jobs around the spread of electricity during the reign of the Tennessee Valley Authority, developing an entire industry around transportation, roads and highways as automobile technology emerged, and catapulting us forward in manufacturing technology during and after WWII.
The U.S. can no longer bury its head in the sand. If our workforce is not modernized we will continue to watch jobs go out of our country until we are completely a land of high high high wage barrons (bailed out from the financial crisis) and people in service jobs "servicing" them.
The answers exist. There are programs proven to work in moving people into the 21st century so they can compete in today's economy. It is imperative that the U.S. advances with the times.

[anakcu]

Is the question why should government become involved or why should government dictate and meddle in such decisions? The two are fundamentally different but SailFree does not appear to recognize the difference. Government should be involved in the provision of education because too little of it would be provided if we relied solely on markets. Speaking personally, government has certainly not destroyed education because without public education I'd probably be one of the millions of illiterates in a SailFree alternative libertarian reality (and my public education appears to have been a heck of a lot better than the prep school/Ivy league legacy experience of our current commander-­in-chief). Same with mortgages--the market wasn't destroyed by government involvement but by abdicating the responsibility for keeping the rules of the game fair and transparent. Your rhetorical meddling questions are uninformed. But the same argument that proper government involvement in education and financial markets is efficiency enhancing also applies to workforce development: too little will be provided without government involvement, and private actors alone are unable to solve the coordination problems of skill upgrading (personal investment) and technological innovation (capital investment) [althought SailFree could argue that these problems would not exist in an alternative reality with slavery]. Blind faith in the market can be as disasterous as blind faith in government, but both are false choices.

[BlackSheep]

I would like to see Obama address the working class and the working poor, of which I am still one although I am educated to master's level and am working on my PhD. I work as adjunct faculty and teach about ten classes a year, but I still have to supplement my income by working nights and weekends for $9 bucks an hour at a local chain restaurant.

My student loan payments will ensure that I never really get ahead. Can I have a bailout and loan renegotiation too?