Northeast Ohio employers are getting creative as they face a growing gap between their education requirements for even entry-level jobs in the region's major growth industries and the number of perspective employees who have or are working to get the needed degrees.
"By 2025, 65% of Ohio's workforce will need to have a secondary degree," said Jacob Duritsky, vice president of strategy and research at Team NEO and author of the group's "Aligning Opportunities 2020 Report," released Wednesday, Sept. 16.
The report evaluated pre-COVID data related to the region's continued workforce imbalance in high-potential careers in the IT, health care and manufacturing sectors. At present, only 34% of the region's population has a two- or four-year degree, while another 21% have some post-secondary schooling but no degree, Duritsky said.
That shortfall is exacerbated by declines in the region's population and Northeast Ohio's retention of less than 47% of its graduates, translating to only about 14,600 newly degreed graduates annually entering the local labor market, Duritsky said. The region needs more aggressive and creative skills training to meet employers' demand for talent, he said.
The report — created with data from firms, including Burning Glass Labor Insight/Jobs and EMSI 2020, and government sources such as the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services — highlights needs in particular occupations. Registered nurses, with a total of 46,106 jobs in the region, an increase of nearly 11,000 from the prior year's report, are at the top of the 20 most high-demand occupations. High-demand jobs, as defined in the report, are those that offer "family-sustaining wages," are estimated to grow and have a relatively low risk of automation.
Nursing is followed by software developers and general computer employees, which saw a regional growth in demand of more than 5,000 and 4,000 new jobs, respectively.
"The trends have not changed markedly," Duritsky said of that data gathered before the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered businesses and caused mass unemployment in March. "This could and will look very different next year, in a post-COVID economy, but we think the pandemic will be an 18-to-24-month trend, not a huge shift in what the region is going to need going forward."
IT continues to be a growth occupation in the region. Northeast Ohio saw 4,249 of 6,457 entry-level IT jobs go unfilled in 2018, according to Team NEO. The report also estimates jobs in general computing are set to grow at a rate of 5%, web developers at 7%, and software development at 10% in a period from 2019 to 2024.
As the demand for these IT jobs increases beyond the supply of college graduates, Duritsky said, companies are de-emphasizing or even eliminating the formal bachelor's degree requirement in favor of finding candidates with relevant skills and experience.
"Increasingly where companies are having a hard time filling positions, they are starting to view the minimum education requirements differently," he said. "There are still some examples where a bachelor's is required, but we are starting to see some movement."
Some companies, including Westlake-based Hyland Software, have removed the formal education requirement for most tech job descriptions. Youngstown State University, in partnership with IBM, launched an IT Workforce Accelerator program, offering alternative educational pathways and apprenticeship programs to obtain tech credentials.
Work-based learning experiences, internships and apprenticeships designed to foster on-the-job skills are poised to be a solution for what has become "an inefficient job market," according to a 2017 Harvard Business School study.
The study found employers that adhered to strict four-year degree requirements for entry-level and mid-skills level jobs "closed off access to the two-thirds of the U.S. workforce without a four-year college degree." It also pointed to the pool of unemployed people ages 16 to 24 as a potential untapped resource for companies eager to find skilled labor.
Earl R. Major, vice president of human resources for Delta Dental, understands his dental benefits company needs to look beyond a strict reliance on degree requirements to build a skilled workforce, particularly in IT.
Of the about 1,000 employees at Delta Dental, more than 200 are in the IT department. The company has pulled away from relying solely on educational attainment.
Delta Dental now hosts hackathon competitions and has created summer break internships and after-school, part-time and shadowing opportunities for many local high school students, Major said.
"We want to start planting that seed at the high school level instead of waiting for them to go to college," he said.
Delta Dental also is in the process of creating a full-time talent outreach position so it can begin engaging students as early as the sixth grade to help them become prepared for the workforce of the future.
The company, which is based in Michigan but has affiliates across the country, also recognizes candidates can be vetted based on their competence and skill level rather than using education attainment as a proxy for determining talent, Major said.
"There is a combination screening and interview process, and some jobs that require a skills assessment," Major said. "It is not materially different than what we have always done, but now, particularly, it is more important what you bring to the table."
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