Study: Growing gap between talent demand and supply
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A new report from Ascend Indiana, a talent and workforce development initiative, and EmployIndy shows a widening gap between demand for highly skilled, highly educated workers and the number of Indiana students pursuing college degrees who could one day fill those jobs. The report is intended to illustrate major changes to the supply and demand for talent in the state and in central Indiana. The organizations say as pandemic restrictions began to ease, it left behind what they call a “vast and permanent shift” away from postsecondary enrollment by Indiana residents.
In an interview with Inside INdiana Business, Ascend INdiana President and Chief Executive Officer Jason Kloth said it is important for the Hoosier State to produce and retain more college graduates to fill the growing number of tech jobs.
“Demand for degreed talent has only accelerated. While we’ve seen slow demand for non-degree talent over time,” said Kloth. “That is particularly acute in Marion County, where the number of jobs that require only a high school degree or potentially no degree are declining…while the number of jobs that require post-secondary education continued to increase, which has very meaningful long term implications.”
LISTEN: Kloth explains the key findings of the report.
Kloth says the misalignment between job growth and educational attainment in Marion County will likely present significant short- and long-term challenges associated with deepening poverty levels.
The report, Indiana’s Evolving Labor Market: How the Pandemic has Accelerated Misalignment in Talent Supply and Demand, indicates many of the trends existed long before the pandemic began, but the events of the last two-and-a-half years have escalated the misalignment.
“One of the reasons we need to continue to modernize our economy, and increase the educational attainment of our population, is that it is in some ways a safeguard against those effects [of a global pandemic]. And it was seen very clearly in the economic trends from his pandemic,” said Kloth.
In June, the Indiana Commission for Higher Education released a report that parallels this new data. The ICHE said pandemic caused the percentage of Indiana high school graduates pursuing college or other post-secondary training to fall by six percentage points, to 53%, in 2020.
That drop also marked an 18% decline from where it stood in 2015.
“Indiana’s sharp one-year college-going decline is alarming, and we have to treat it as such. We know individual lives and the state’s economy depend on and thrive with an educated society,” said Indiana Commissioner for Higher Education Chris Lowery.
The partners say as the labor market continues to change at a rapid pace, it is more important than ever for Indiana to produce and retain more college graduates with relevant and marketable knowledge, skills and abilities in order to obtain high-demand jobs being offered in growing numbers by employers.
But the message of the importance of an obtaining a secondary degree or certification must start earlier.
“Increasing education and employer partnerships is foundational in changing some of these trends, with employers of all sizes providing career awareness and work-based learning experiences beginning in middle school and extending beyond high school,” said Marie Mackintosh, president and CEO, EmployIndy. “Engaging students and offering quality work-based learning opportunities including in-class and real-world experiences, has shown to be successful in supporting career readiness and workforce alignment, but more needs to be done to adopt data-driven strategies to expand on these learnings.”
The organizations developed a list of recommendations to address alignment gaps. Those can be found in the full report.
LISTEN: Kloth spells out some of the recommendations.