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Help wanted: St. Louis needs larger skilled workforce to grow economy

Record-low unemployment translates into a shortage of skilled workers for area businesses that want to hire and grow.
photo credit|Innov8social, Flickr, Creative Commons
Record-low unemployment translates into a shortage of skilled workers for area businesses that want to hire and grow.

Job skills are the focus of the 2018 State of St. Louis Workforce study published Wednesday by the Workforce Solutions Group of St. Louis Community College.

This year’s report is titled “Help Wanted: A Skilled Workforce. Addressing the Workforce Needs of the St. Louis Economy.

It is the 10th-annual survey based on real-time labor market data and a regional phone survey of 1,246 employers in the St. Louis Metropolitan Statistical Area. The MSA includes 16 counties on both sides of the Mississippi River, with an estimated population of more than 2.8 million.

This year’s study focuses on three industries: health care, financial services and information technology. These fields are expected to dominate the St. Louis region in terms of employment for the next decade and beyond. And each field requires specialized skills that are in short supply now with unemployment at record lows.

“More employers reported a shortage of skilled applicants in the 2018 survey compared to 2017,” according to the workforce report. “For the third straight year, a shortage of workers with knowledge and skills is the most frequently cited barrier to expanding employment.”

Chancellor Jeff Pittman told St. Louis Public Radio that universities, colleges and the business community need to explore new ways to prepare future employees for the workplace.

“We need to think about all kinds of instructional modalities,” Pittman said. “There are opportunities to collaborate on training that companies are doing and transfer that into academic credits that lead to credentials that employers are requiring for a job. That’s a strategy we can deploy.”

Pittman said that apprenticeships or internships are required for many academic degree programs. He called for new partnerships between community agencies, businesses and academia to find ways to provide those kinds of experiences to the underemployed and unemployed.Loading...

Job openings exceed job seekers by 20 percent in the Midwest, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

In the St. Louis MSA in April 2018, there were 47,407 unemployed persons, a reduction of 4,368, or 8.4 percent, from the 51,775 unemployed in April 2017.

In response to the State of St. Louis Workforce survey, employers listed the top shortcomings they found among current applicants. They range from poor work habits to lack of technological skills specific to the job. Communication and teamwork skills are also lacking.

“We have a lot of work to do to make a difference,” Pittman said. “We need to help these employers grow. If they can’t grow, they can’t grow their market share, and that’s not good for the St. Louis economy.”

Follow Melody on Twitter @melodybird

Copyright 2021 St. Louis Public Radio. To see more, visit St. Louis Public Radio.

Long-time public radio listeners may remember hearing Melody Walker sign off from Paris in the 1980’s where she covered arts, politics, gastronomy, exiled dictators, and terrorist attacks for six years. She returned to WNYC (where she had her first job as a reporter while a student at Barnard College) and became producer of theLeonard Lopate Showand a newsroom reporter. Soon afterMarketplacelaunched, Melody was tapped to run the business show’s New York Bureau. She continued to work forMarketplaceas a freelancer in Chicago and contributed to WBEZ community coverage before another stint in Paris just in time to report on the Euro’s debut and the French reaction to the events of 9/11.