Matching Workers to Jobs in the Commonwealth

This is the eighth in a series of pieces on opportunity, income inequality, and economic mobility. Complementing The Boston Foundation’s Opportunity Forums, and its year-long effort to highlight income inequality, this series will touch on a wide variety of research and topics pertaining to economic mobility. For more on the Opportunity Forums, please visit: www.tbf.org/opportunity.

Last week, Northeastern University’s Dukakis Center for Urban and Regional Policy, in conjunction with the Massachusetts School Building Authority, released a report alerting the Commonwealth of future labor shortages. Using US Department of Labor projections, the report found that, between 2012 and 2022, there will be nearly 1.2. million new job openings in Massachusetts. While that figure represents much potential opportunity for those seeking jobs, it also means that the state may have trouble finding enough labor to fill its needs:

    “Between 2012 and 2022, our research projects a total of nearly 1.2 million job openings in the Commonwealth. Two-thirds (66%) of all these expected job openings — nearly 780,000 — will occur as the result of retirements from existing jobs and the need for replacement workers who choose to leave a job in a particular occupation for another one. The remaining 382,000 of these projected job openings will occur as the result of net new job creation — an increase of 11.4 percent over 2012 levels.” — Meeting the Commonwealth’s Workforce Needs

How will the Commonwealth address the potential labor shortage? A closer look at the numbers reveals high schools, vocational schools, and community colleges will bear much of the worker training burden. Almost two-thirds of the new jobs will require less than a bachelor’s degree to perform.

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As one might expect, the food services and healthcare industries are projected to have the most growth, each gaining 4,000 net new jobs per year. Other fields expecting solid growth include business, computing, and personal care services. The legal field faces minimal growth, with less than 400 net new jobs per year, and the production industries will experience an absolute decrease in employment — according to projections, they will lose 460 jobs per year.

Are Massachusetts’ vocational schools and community colleges equipped to train professionals in the state’s fastest growing fields? Unfortunately, the data is unclear. At current graduation rates, vocational school graduates would fill only 11.7% of total job openings. Higher enrollment and graduation rates would, naturally, see that number rise. Much, then, depends on decisions made to increase the capacity of vocational schools or educational institutions with vocational tracks.

The Dukakis Center’s report is undoubtedly an important contribution to our understanding of Massachusetts’ economic future. It does, however, bear noting that the report’s job opening projections assume steady economic growth until 2022. Considering that the United States’ consistently experiences at least one recession per decade, it seems unlikely that the number of projected job openings is actually achieved.

A further note should be made on the solutions to any potential labor shortages. While it is clearly necessary to train workers, and particularly those of little financial means, with employable skills in high-demand fields, policymakers must be wary of creating one system of education for the poor and another for the wealthy. The benefits of education that addresses more than a single vocation — education that is holistic in approach, promotes critical thinking, and continually attempts to expand students’ horizons — must not be the sole privilege of those with enough economic and social advantages to attend expensive colleges. Balancing necessary and practical vocational training with the benefits of expansive liberal arts education is, fundamentally, an issue of equality.