Employers asked to put focus on skilled workers
Allegheny Conference on Community Development leaders are calling on the region’s employers to increase efforts to attract and retain skilled workers in the face of a massive shift underway in the local workforce.
The message was presented during the conference’s annual meeting Wednesday in Pittsburgh, where it was noted more than 250,000 baby boomers working in the region will be eligible to retire in the next 10 years.
The conference noted that between 2008 and 2013, more than 60,000 baby boomers left the region’s workforce.
“According to current migration trends, it’s estimated that the region is missing about 100,000 people to replace the retiring baby boomers, if no further action is taken,” ACCD reported.
That challenge is compounded by the fact that skills employers will need in the future are changing and the region will be competing for skilled workers with other regions across the country.
“We’re facing the opportunity and the challenge of a major shift in the demographics and workforce of our region. A generation is clocking out and a new generation is clocking in. And it’s happening right now,” said Morgan O’Brien, president and CEO, Peoples Natural Gas and chairman of ACCD.
“We’ve got to shift into a higher gear and be more aggressive about connecting people to opportunity in our region.”
The meeting highlighted recent accomplishments in the conference’s 2015-17 agenda, which is designed to connect people to opportunity through strategies focused on economy and community, infrastructure and workforce. Among the highlights:
• Workforce – Continued investment in ImaginePittsburgh.com, a regional job portal that hosts more than 20,000 open positions on an average day. Over the past two years, posted jobs were viewed more than 2 million times by more than 270,000 users across the U.S. and in 40 other countries.
• Economy & Community – Secured nearly $49 million in funding for the new Power of 32 Site Development Fund to accelerate business investment by bringing shovel-ready sites to market faster in the 32 counties of the greater Pittsburgh region. The fund is intended to close critical infrastructure financing gaps for items such as rail line expansion and renovation, utility line installation, and clearing, grading and environmental remediation activities.
• Economy & Community – Added two new communities, Homewood and Sharpsburg, to the successful Strengthening Communities Partnership which has leveraged nearly $10 million in private investment plus targeted pro bono services to drive revitalization and build capacity in seven communities that have been left behind by the region’s economic transformation.
• Economy & Community – Partnered with Team NEO (Ohio) and Vision Shared (W. Va.) to support a new Regional Cooperation Agreement signed by three governors to establish a shared economic development strategy that reaches over state boundaries to capture business investment related to natural gas downstream activities, such as potential ethane cracker facilities, within the tri-state region.
• Infrastructure – Launched the new Regional Transportation Alliance of Southwestern PA, a public-private partnership to facilitate a broad community discussion about the future of transportation in the 10-county region.
At the conclusion of the meeting, conference Vice Chair Richard Harshman, chairman, president and CEO of Allegheny Technologies Inc., was announced as the incoming chair. His term will begin in January.
ACCD and its Affiliates – the Greater Pittsburgh Chamber of Commerce, the Pennsylvania Economy League of Greater Pittsburgh and the Pittsburgh Regional Alliance – work in collaboration with public and private sector partners improving the economy and the quality of life in Southwestern Pennsylvania.