Connect Oregonians to Jobs through Training

Overall unemployment remains high. Reducing unemployment quickly requires a two-pronged approach. First, we need to create a demand for skilled workers who are idle. For example, there are many currently unemployed workers in the building trades that need no additional training and can move immediately to do commercial insulation and other weatherization work. Second, we need to match other workers with training for those occupations that are still in high demand. High demand occupations like healthcare workers, technicians, and welders offer immediate opportunities for return to employment. Newly developing occupations like wind power and other “green” sector technical jobs offer obvious targets for new or redirected training investments and help to attract new economic investment.

The key is to connect Oregonians seeking work to the education and training needed to qualify for available jobs. To fix this problem we must recognize that:

• Many unemployed workers lack the basic skills to qualify for a training program.

• Many more lack the particular skills or certification needed to qualify for the particular jobs that are available.

• Training opportunities exist, but are not always known to those who need them and do not adjust quickly enough to the cycles or changing directions of Oregon’s economy.

• Unemployed or underemployed Oregonians cannot always afford the cost of training, are hesitant to ask for help, or don’t know where to go for it.

Strong leadership by the Governor can help remove these barriers. Oregon must quickly implement the following management actions to fix the problem of getting people training that is connected to work:

• Quickly identify applicants who already have the foundation skills for these jobs and help get them into appropriate public and private training programs right away. Ask those who provide such programs to link services needed to overcome limited basic skills with the first steps in training programs. Similarly, link each step in education and training programs to the next, in the form of career pathways, ending in certificates that reflect employer-certified skill requirements.
  

• Assign responsibility to prepare Oregon’s “middle skills" jobs to community colleges, apprenticeship programs and other providers in the technical education community. Change state funding for such efforts from a general allocation to an investment approach that can anticipate and adjust to changes in Oregon’s high demand and developing middle skills job categories.

• Recognize that this focus on developing jobs categories is also a national priority and aggressively pursue ARRA and other funding opportunities that do not require new state revenues.

• Incorporate the non-profit sector in identifying and initiating the changes in past practices needed to accomplish this shift in the focus and purpose of our education and training efforts.

• Implement new training efforts that compliment, expand, and do not compete with existing programs like labor apprenticeships and other existing training programs.