CEDAR RAPIDS — From launching a brand new enterprise engagement division, to utilizing federal pandemic reduction cash on a brand new advertising and recruitment marketing campaign, to serving to employers present dual-language instruction, Iowa’s prime financial and workforce improvement officers shared their concepts for fixing the state’s workforce challenges throughout Thursday’s Iowa Concepts convention.
“We now have a inhabitants downside in Iowa, proper? We now have extra jobs than there are individuals to fill them,” state Financial Growth Director Debi Durham stated throughout The Gazette’s digital convention, which continues as we speak.
A listing of as we speak’s Iowa Concepts classes, that are free with registration, may be discovered at iowaideas.com.
Iowa has about 84,400 open jobs and about 44,700 individuals unemployed, in keeping with Iowa Workforce Growth.
U.S. and Iowa inhabitants tendencies level to a shrinking workforce. Child boomers are retiring, and birthrates are declining under substitute numbers. Immigrants and refugees have been the most important drivers of Iowa’s inhabitants positive factors
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Immigrants made up 44 p.c of Iowa’s inhabitants progress from 2010 to 2019, and Iowa’s non-white inhabitants elevated by 60 p.c over the past decade.
Iowa Workforce Growth lately launched a brand new Enterprise Engagement Division, which Director Beth Townsend stated is designed to be “a one-stop store” to assist employers discover options and can create a extra environment friendly state construction for assessing workforce challenges of Iowa companies.
The brand new division was created on the route of Gov. Kim Reynolds. Coinciding with the launch, members and state company leaders are touring throughout the state to talk to employers, the company stated.
In January, Iowa Workforce Growth launched a program that Townsend stated seeks to get unemployed Iowans again to work as shortly as doable, by offering enhanced providers to these submitting for jobless advantages at first of the claims course of — inside the first week. The company supplies profession teaching and assists individuals find jobs extra shortly, together with by serving to match their abilities with the talents want by native firms with vacant jobs, and connecting them to lessons centered on resume writing and techniques for profitable job interviews. For these receiving unemployment advantages, their work-search necessities are audited weekly.
“What I actually love about this packages is we’ve actually been capable of assist individuals attain larger than they in any other case would have reached, as a result of we inspired them” to go after their dream job, Townsend stated. “We’re actually making an attempt to advertise hope, making an attempt to encourage them to do extra and be greater than they ever felt doable.”
To this point, she stated Iowa Workforce Growth has helped greater than 20,000 unemployed Iowans by this system.
“It’s not nearly getting staff for employers. It truly is discovering significant work for these which can be within the job search,” Durham added.
Townsend additionally highlighted state officers efforts to recruit and assist veterans and veteran spouses discover careers in Iowa after they’ve left the navy, by Residence Base Iowa.
She stated the company has employed 5 profession navigators to assist veterans discover a job in Iowa and make connections with employers on the lookout for people with comparable, fascinating talent units, and has helped greater than 220 veterans discover work within the state.
The pair stated state officers are also centered on growing the state’s expertise pipeline and offering accessible, reasonably priced pathways for Iowa highschool college students to obtain an schooling and begin a well-paying profession within the state by apprenticeships.
“We’ve seen a big enhance within the variety of excessive colleges collaborating“ in registered apprenticeships, Townsend stated.
She famous highschool college students in 140 Iowa faculty districts will begin coaching as paraeducators as a part of a brand new grant program designed to carry extra lecturers into the workforce.
The roughly $46 million Trainer and Paraeducator Registered Apprenticeship Pilot Grant Program permits highschool college students and adults to coach as classroom aides, in the end incomes a paraeducator certificates and dealing towards an affiliate diploma, and permits present paraeducators to earn a bachelor’s diploma and a full educating license.
Townsend stated this system could result in the certification of 1,100 new lecturers and paraeducators.
Regardless of setbacks and workforce challenges posed by COVID-19, Durham stated the pandemic has supplied some silver linings.
She stated market analysis reveals that with the rise of firms adjusting to distant work alternatives, 7 in 10 Individuals are more likely to think about transferring for the precise alternative. State officers have used federal pandemic reduction funds to grab on that opening by a $10 million advertising marketing campaign touting Iowa as a vacation spot.
The marketing campaign is constructed on analysis across the perceptions of Iowa, displaying that the majority Individuals merely don’t know sufficient concerning the state to kind an correct opinion.
“We’re not countering a unfavorable model,” Durham stated. “For us, it’s actually about an introduction. It begins with, ‘We haven’t been correctly launched.’”
She stated market analysis reveals Individuals keen to relocate are on the lookout for affordability, financial vitality, a various and wholesome job market and out of doors recreation.
“We consider Iowa checks all of these containers,” she stated.
Durham stated the state additionally continues to recruit new employers to the state, even with the tight labor market. These recruitment efforts have been centered on manufacturing and bio-based chemical substances, utilizing biomass to create bio-based merchandise which can be more healthy, sustainable and options to petrochemical merchandise.
“For the very first time, that worth proposition is making financial sense,” Durham stated of recent and rising applied sciences. “There’s a ton of cash chasing it.”
