[Watch] Data, Analysis, and Strategies to Strengthen Your Community’s Workforce

Sydney Diavua

Good afternoon and welcome to Connecting Communities. Thank you for joining us for today’s webinar, Data Analysis and Strategies to Strengthen your Community’s Workforce. I’m Sydney Diavua, assistant vice president, community development at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis and I will serve as your host for today’s session.

Before we get started, let’s move to slide two, where we can take care of a few housekeeping items. The views expressed during this session are those of the speakers and are intended for informational purposes. They do not necessarily represent the views of Fed Communities or the Federal Reserve System. Microphones have been muted. Please use the Q&A feature throughout the session to submit questions. We promise to get to as many of them as possible during the Q&A portion of the session.

Let’s keep the conversation going and engage with us on social media, using the hashtag #connectingcommunities and visit FedCommunities.org for a variety of community development articles, resources and data across the Federal Reserve system. And finally, this session will be recorded and the presentation, video, and podcast will be available on FedCommunities.org within two weeks of this event.

Next, to kick off our session today, I’d like to welcome Bill Rogers, vice president of Community Development Research at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Bill, the floor is yours.

William Rodgers III

Thank you, Sydney. And it’s wonderful to collaborate with you on this, and collaborate with our colleagues throughout the system. Yes, as Sydney said, I’m vice president for Community Development Research here at the St. Louis Fed, and my role is to provide the data and a little bit of analysis part of today’s session. Let’s get right into it, because our time is short. Can I have the next slide, please?

The way I’ve described when I described labor market and community conditions is first let’s talk about some good news, and then we’ll talk about some challenges to economic mobility, which will then lead into sharing some survey results from a new survey that has been put in the field and that will provide a more current picture of the labor market. Because that’s what our goal here is, is to have a conversation about labor market resiliency.

To start off with some good news, we’ve seen, since April 2023 to present, job openings have fallen by a little more than 2 million. However, and along with those job openings falling, we have been seeing hiring and quits have fallen, while layoffs have risen slightly. What that means is, particularly with the hiring and quits falling, it potentially means that workers or individuals seeking jobs or who are working may not be as confident about being able to find a new alternative or new job. But the good news is labor markets remain very strong. For example, the nation’s unemployment rate has been at or below 4.5% for 44 consecutive months, 53 consecutive months for non-farm payroll job creation. And then, the ratio of job openings to unemployment remains close to serious lows. That means that basically the number of jobs available to individuals is greater than the number of people searching for jobs.

And then, if you broaden in your notion of workers or individuals who want employment to where you add in people who have been surveyed, they say they are actively stopped searching but want a job. And if you include those who are working part-time for economic reasons, that gets you to about 13.4 million Americans, or million individuals who are ready and available to work. And as what former labor secretary, Alexis Herman, who I used to work with, I worked with. She would say, because of that sizable number, we have a skill shortage as opposed to a worker shortage. And that leads you right into some conversations about workforce development.

Now, there are some challenges to economic mobility. We’ve seen that during this current expansion that the growth in full-time weekly wages has lagged the consumer price index at each segment of the distribution. So regardless of whether you’re a low-skilled worker, a medium-skilled worker, a high-skilled worker, people’s weekly wages have been lagging the growth in consumer price index.

Another indicator that I follow a great deal is what’s called labor share. And that’s basically taking the total pie of the economy, the total amount of income in the economy, and estimating, well, how much of that is going to workers? And what we’ve seen over the last five to 10 years or so, that share has been falling. Another concern of mine is that real hourly compensation has been growing, but has been growing slower than productivity growth. What does that mean? The summarizing phrase could be right, people are working harder but their compensation isn’t staying up with their effort.

And also, in our community development group, we’ve identified a variety of workers who we call vulnerable workers. And these are workers or individuals who they have relative to some peer group or some overall average, their employment population ratios. That is the share of that group that’s working is below average. But more importantly, when you look at how their outcomes are related to changes in the business cycle or improvements in the economy or weakening the economy, these are people who are more sensitive. Who are some examples? Well, out of school youths, these are people who are 18 to 24 years of age but are not working and they’re not actively looking for a job. Or they could be working but they’re not enrolled. Yes, they’re not enrolled in school. Well, what’s happened with this group and others, some new entrants, particularly people who have been sighting new recent college grads, that their unemployment rates actually have risen since the peak of the labor market in April 2023.

And another challenge in the labor market that was borne out by the pandemic was child care. And today, my colleague Dr. Ana Kent, and her work has shown that about half of mothers with a child or children who are between six to 17, listed child care or family responsibilities as reasons they weren’t actively looking for a job. And these are women who want a job. Again, we’re setting this conversation up for our panelists who will give us some insights on some strategies.

And then, finally, some very concerning information that creates major challenges from economic mobility. And that is that 42% of American households today, and this number hasn’t changed over the last probably five to 10 years, they’re considered what are called ALICE families or ALICE households. And many of you may have heard of ALICE, where ALICE stands for Asset Limited, Income-Constrained and Employed. And these are basically about 42% of households who don’t have enough resources, income, and other sources to make ends meet. And that is to make ends meet to a basic survival budget.

And then, finally, another big concern of ours, we’ve just published two blogs on economic anxiety on the economy, a blog series at the St. Louis Fed. And that is about 40 to 50% of households have little to no discretionary income. What that means is that, particularly at lower part of the income scale, these are families who are living in the red. They’re probably ALICE, and they’re having difficulty making ends meet. What’s so striking about to have those kinds of numbers in such a strong economy raises concern. And hopefully, again, our panelists will shed some light on that for us.

Before I turn it over to my colleague, Sergio Galeano, from the Atlanta Fed, I do want to summarize and go to the next slide. And I do want to summarize some evidence from a new survey that was recently in the field. It’s collected by what’s called a SkillUp Coalition. And this coalition is a national non-profit of over 100 organizations, and the goal is to connect workers with the right tools, resources, and support. It’s also to position participants for a promising career growth or expansion.

Now, these are individuals who typically have no more than a high school degree and now they’re seeking assistance. What’s the great news, is that thus far this coalition has connected over 1.6 million workers to career and training supports. Who are some of these organizations that are members of this coalition? We have training and education providers, tech firms, employers, and philanthropists are actively engaged, actively involved.

What are some summary of evidence from their most recent survey? We go to the next slide. And what I’m going to share with you I think connects back with the description I just gave you with regards to some of the published data that the government collects. But in terms of household finances, respondents were saying in the last six months that over two-thirds of households saw their expenses increase. Almost 60% of households said their income did not cover expenses, so that would be consistent with the ALICE estimate, would be consistent with Dr. Kent and my work on discretionary income, or the absence of it.

And then we look at their labor market experiences, only about 5% are not at all confident they will find a better job in the next three months. That’s positive. However, though, if you go to the next bullet, only 9% are most interested in pursuing a career in the skilled trades. And this is important, because our economy has faced large, long-standing skill shortages, as Secretary Herman would describe these. And that they have not abated. About two-thirds, which are going to be consistent with our ALICE and our discretionary income experiences. Two-thirds feel anxious, unsure, concerned, or cautious about AI. So even specific, not just the economy, but about AI in the workplace. That is the new possible form of displacement. And then, finally, 82% are concerned about their physical health.

Those are just a quick snapshot of a few really important pieces of information from that survey. But I really recommend that when that survey comes out and my colleagues put that work out, that you do seek and find and read that report. The next slide please, then I’m going to move into a transition mode to our panel, who’s going to be moderated by my colleague, Sergio Galeano, from the Atlanta Fed.

And based upon my reading the data, or analyzing the data, I came up with three questions that I hope will guide some of our conversation. And the first one is, what should the goals of workforce development be? And second, how well are communities achieving this goal? And then third, what actionable strategies can be implemented or expanded to proactively build and maintain a resilient workforce? Those are the three questions that bubble up for me based upon my data and analysis. And love to hear, Sergio, what you have to say and what your panelists have to say. Thank you.

Sergio Galeano

Thank you so much, Bill. And I really appreciate you providing a framing for today’s discussion. Good afternoon everyone around the country, thank you so much for joining us. My name is Sergio Galeano, community and economic development advisor with the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. And it really is a true joy to be here. This is a very timely discussion.

As Bill illuminated, there are reasons to be optimistic, things that are pointed up and good for workers and households today, and there are reasons to be cautious. Workforce development is important to all of us here on our call. We might have friends and partners who are more tied into education or other relevant workforce development as a policy area. Besides being my home policy area at the Federal Reserve, it’s so important. I believe it is one of the principle drivers and policy levers we can pull and push to really help people participate more fully in the economy, realize their economic potential. Whether that means living a better life, work-life balance with children and family. More income, being able to buy the things they want, a bigger home. Education for their children.

We’re talking about the stuff of life. And work, along with housing, childcare and other areas, really define a big cornerstone of giving people the economic livelihood to do those things. Now, this conversation is timely, and I want to thank Bill for really being the impetus for today’s conversation, someone who’s really tied to the economic data. But something we’ve also heard anecdotally is a certain level of uncertainty. And I think it’s relevant as well when we think about workforce resilience. When we’re talking about resilience, we’re generally talking about the ability of an individual, a family, and organization to withstand and adapt to changing economic events. Most times when you think about workforce resilience, we’re referring to negative events, say a pandemic or recession, a tragic natural disaster. Any number of things that might be what we call shocks and stressors to communities. But when you think about the definition of good luck, it’s being ready when opportunity comes, right?

And in that sense, I think of workforce resilience as being really close to its sister concept of economic mobility. Being the chance for someone to rise, let’s say up the economic ladder. Have the chance to better their jobs, find opportunities, move where they want, live where they want. So workforce resilience, whether it’s a challenging time and we want people to adapt the changes, or a good time, and we want to have workers and the workforce development sector at large to be ready to reap those benefits, we’re really talking about a comprehensive strategy. Rather than wait for crises or wait for opportunities to come knocking, we thought we should engender a better culture of being proactive, whether we’re providers, researchers, delivery partners, supportive services, workforce intermediaries, or government. For that reason, let this be the first of many conversations, and I want to thank you all and our esteemed panelists for taking time out of your day and week and joining us here in July.

As I introduce our panelists, I invite them to come on camera, and we’ll get on the next slide as well to show them. We have with us Tera West, deputy director of KentuckianaWorks. KentuckianaWorks is the workforce development board serving the seven counties that comprise the Louisville region in Kentucky. We have John Helton, president and CEO of CareerRise. CareerRise being a workforce intermediary here in my home city of Atlanta, that helps connect the dots between funders, workforce funders, employers, job seekers, training providers, and supportive services. From St. Louis, we have Connie Johnson, newly appointed executive director of SLATE, that is St. Louis’s Agency on Training and Employment. Similarly working to bring together job seekers, employers in the workforce ecosystem to improve the St. Louis area’s economy.

And we have Julianne Dunn, senior program officer for workforce at Rural LISC. Rural LISC, if you haven’t met them yet, is a national nonprofit covering all 50 states and three US territories on a large amount of policy areas impacting rural America workers and households. To the four of you, if you’re not already on camera, please come on. We can drop the slides and get ready to start our panel. Thank you, everyone.

Well, for this first question, we’re not just going to ask the four panelists, we’re going to ask the entire audience to chip in and answer. For the audience, we’re going to go ahead and launch a live poll for you in the chat feature that’s going to ask you to please tell us, how would you rate the state of resilience in your workforce today? And as the results come in, that’ll be live, and we’ll be able to compare it to how our panelists are speaking about workforce resilience.

And now to kick off, we’ll have time throughout this panel to get to Q&A towards the end, but we’re going to start off with defining and looking at your communities. What are the factors driving and taking away from workforce resilience, and getting into some of the programs and solutions. So we can talk about those and have something to take away and maybe chat about dinner tonight with our families or with her colleagues over lunch tomorrow.

I’ll start with you, Tera. Here in St. Louis, and you also worked in workforce for quite some time in New Orleans. Speak to either one, I guess it makes sense for St. Louis now. How would you generally describe the state of workforce resilience in the St. Louis area? I’m sorry, in the Louisville area.

Tera West

In Louisville, yes. And you said it right, we appreciate that. Thanks, Sergio, and great afternoon to everyone. The workforce resilience in Louisville is moderate, I’d say, with noteworthy strengths and significant challenges. Louisville has made important strides in preparing its future workforce, particularly through high school career academies, tech training, and industry partnerships. But major challenges remain. The region faces a significant risk of job loss from automation, a persistent skills gap, and major barriers like childcare and transportation, which are the themes that I think you’ll hear throughout the discussion today.

At the same time, declining federal funding and fragmented workforce systems make it hard to scale some of the solutions that we’ve been able to come up with. Now, on the brighter side, Louisville has made important strides in preparing its future workforce, as I mentioned earlier. As an example, we just did a feature on a young person named Jayden, whose trajectory in life changed because of career training at Iroquois High School. Continuing the strong investments Louisville has made in high school career academies, tech training, and industry partnerships means, our community can create a groundswell of success stories like Jayden’s. In short, while there’s strong momentum of innovation, true workforce resilience will require deeper investment, better coordination, and more inclusive support for adult and underserved workers.

Sergio Galeano

Thank you, Tera. I’d like to hear some more about the collaborative nature later on. You mentioned also some really good points. We’ll dive in. John, we’re both in Atlanta. How would you speak about our city’s resilience today in 2025?

John Helton

How would you, Sergio? I don’t know, since we’re both in the same place. No, I was just watching the results come in from the survey, and I think 54% had gone in for the moderate level. And I would have to agree with St. Louis, that there’s almost a bifurcation of personality of thought around how we’re doing. There’s an optimism, I think, in some areas. But the reality is the unknowns I think are really creating the angst at this point for our region, from a socio-political standpoint of what’s happening, coming down from the administration, from the federal government.

And then, we’ve had some companies, some optimistic announcements that have really resulted in not what we thought they were going to be in terms of company expansions and relocations here in the Metro Atlanta region. A few years ago… Well, I’ll call names, Microsoft was to have built a 70-acre campus on the west side of Atlanta where a lot of our work at CareerRise happens through our managing partner role for Westside Works.

And then, that was Nick’s table for some time. There’s a big Rivian plant in Georgia, had to scale back in what they thought they would be doing for electric truck manufacturing. There are a number of things that have given businesses and job seekers reason for pause. Of course, it creates a difficulty in projecting what training needs may be coming up in the future. For example, if you think a big IT concern is coming to the region and you’ve began training in that regard. And then you have to pivot very quickly when you find out, nope, that’s not going to happen the way that we thought it would. So kind of the start-stop. I think there’s a lot of start-stopping happening right now, as well as just the general uncertainty of what may be happening from a political and an economic standpoint.

Sergio Galeano

Thanks for highlighting some of those important themes. I’m curious if in the audience there’s any economic developers. Some of the points you brought up, bring up economic development, the competition for jobs, and how we can prepare and forecast for employer engagement in our geographies.

Connie, let’s move over to St. Louis with you. Welcome to our panel. Thanks for being here. When you reflect on your city’s resilience and SLATE’s priorities and the challenges it identifies, what’s in your SWOT analysis of the city?

Connie Johnson

Well, St. Louis is part of the Show-me state, and so we are proud and we often have to pivot based upon our circumstances. Here in the city of St. Louis, we have the higher unemployment rate than the metro area, and also the state at a whopping 4.4%. We currently have an estimated 7,000 individuals who are unemployed, but that number has probably gone up because of the tornado that happened here on May 16th, which destroyed not only homes but a number of small businesses as well. And while here at SLATE we are proud for supporting unrepresented, underserved jobs seekers, including individuals who are just as involved, veterans and people with disabilities, new Americans and others facing employment barriers, we are seeing an increasing number of mid-career professionals who are turning to SLATE for support. We are having to expand our services, if you will, to ensure that they too find quality employment opportunities.

At SLATE, we have also had to organize and have rapid response job fairs, and this is in response to sudden layoffs and businesses closing. People are coming to us for assistance and placement. And so, that’s something that’s new for us to try to help those who may not necessarily qualify for our existing programs. But none the less, we are the city’s workforce. We are the force behind workforce, so I’m glad that people are coming.

We are also seeing an uptick in veterans who are coming, particularly with the reduction of the federal civilian workforce. People and their military members and their spouses are trying to safely land into positions outside of federal government. And then, also with having various partnerships, we are proud of our Prison to Prosperity program, which is a pilot that we have launched with the Justice Center. We help incarcerated individuals with soft skills and food service certifications prior to their release. Once they are released, at SLATE, we help connect them with employment. And today, a majority of the graduates that we had from that first program are successfully employed.

But one thing I do want to add, a key factor in building a resilient workforce, is that at SLATE we start early. We offer programs starting at 14 years of age. Many programs start at 16. We make a conscious effort to provide early job placement. We got to get these kids early before they’re exposed to other things, and they will pursue other areas that may not be productive.

I think that in terms of resilience, the Show-me state, we do our best. But just when we were recovering from the pandemic, here comes a tornado. And so, we’re going to probably see some trends similar to what we saw during the pandemic area.

Sergio Galeano

Thank you so much, Connie. Let’s return to those themes very soon. Julianne, unlike our other panelists, Rural LISC covers a very large geography, rural America. But please feel free to speak on behalf of the themes that really come up that you think are most relevant. Or if you’re engaged in a few specific geographies that you think speak well to Rural LISC programs and how you see resilience, let us know.

Julianne Dunn

Well, thank you. I have no problem speaking for 20% of America, which is how many people approximately even live in rural. But I think, to your original question about resiliency, and I will say that in my very biased opinion rural folks have been resilient for a lot longer because they’ve had to make due with a lot less. About six to 8% of funding goes to rural. We’ve had a long history of making things work. But there are a lot of limitations to not just the workforce but the communities at large. Between Tera, John, and Connie, I hear a lot of echo. There’s a limited number of funding available for any kind of programming, especially workforce programming. There is this job skill and opportunity gap. We’ll have communities that have a lot of folks that are trained in a specific skillset, but no jobs, and two towns over they have a lot of jobs and nobody’s skilled to do it.

And those two towns are hundreds of miles away from each other. Because the geographies in rural, it’s sometimes up to two to three hours to the next town. Sometimes it’s 20 minutes, but sometimes it’s a much longer. And who knows if they have a car, or there’s definitely no public transportation. And those roads also might be quite hazardous. If anyone’s ever driven in rural America at night, not only are there no lights, but there are also deer who have the choice to dive at your car.

And what we’ve also heard, and Connie referenced the disaster, the tornado in St. Louis, we see this over and over again in rural spaces. We have not recovered from the pandemic. We had a lot of businesses close. A lot of people, there was a lot of migration in rural America. And I don’t know if we’ll ever truly see how many people moved around because the census was at the beginning of the pandemic. And we heard anecdotally people having moved to the rural areas, but it’s very difficult to figure that out. Plus, we historically have a very low, like an under count in census in the rural areas. And 10 years is a long time.

But we also have, we see this every week, floods, fires, tornadoes, hurricanes. We have communities, west North Carolina, that year was a year ago for Hurricane Helene, and they are still struggling. And all of this is all about the workforce. All of this connects to the workforce ecosystem. If you’re feeling unsafe, if your businesses are closing down, you don’t have access to a job or you don’t have access to the education to get that job. And more importantly, to reference John’s ALICE, if you don’t have access… or, I’m sorry, Bill’s reference to ALICE members, you also don’t have the luxury of stopping the job you have to get the skills to get the better paying job.

Our goal, to actually go back to Bill’s question too, our goal is to get more people into family sustaining wage jobs that they’ve chosen and not that they have to take because they have obligations. We would love to do income wealth in generation. That feels like the next step. There’s a lot of similarities with what’s going on in urban to rural, but there’s just a little more intensity about it. And rural at baseline, there is no shared definition of what rural is. People have a general idea they think they know what rural means. But even within the federal government there are multiple definitions of what rural is, which does make it difficult to even understand what the baseline data is to make improvements. We’re facing a lot of challenges, but I cannot emphasize enough, rural is as a character, they are resilient. They make do with what they have. They will show up when their neighbor needs help. And they will make it work.

Sergio Galeano

Thank you, Julianne. And thanks for ending on that point about data, or lack of clear definitions. That’s really important. We know that for programs, eligibility thresholds. Census, 10 years is a long time. And I think I remember you telling me we’re talking about 20% of Americans across 75% of our landmass. So transportation might be the one that comes to mind, or proximity, or just the potential of events, negative or positive. But it’s a huge population. And across St. Louis, Atlanta and Louisville on the outskirts and metro areas, we might be getting to rural America. This is just as relevant for all of us here.

Thank you, everyone. Let’s move on to dig in a little bit more into the factors that really contribute and/or take away. If you want to focus on things that you’re seeing that are working well to increase resilience, please do so. If you want to harp a little bit more on the uncertainty or some of the things you teed up already in the negative side, we have room for both as well. I also want to take this chance, before we dive in back to you, to share back some of the results from the registration question that all audience attendees filled out. Mandatory for a reason, because we think this data is interesting.

The top three barriers that people in this audience said were holding communities back from resilience. Childcare with about 50% of the results, about 47. Housing and skill gaps. In the next tier, all these skills matter, so we’re not ranking by what’s more important than that. But in tiers of how many people answered, the second tier around the same results were unique barriers faced by specific demographic groups. Some folks already mentioned a few rural, military, youth. Let’s say single parents, elder care. Insufficient soft or interpersonal skills. And automation. I’m sure a lot of that is tied to recent uncertainty or learning to understand AI’s slow but tangible impact on certain parts of the labor market. But we might also be speaking about automation like robotics and other things that have been around for a few decades. We can unpack that.

Declining labor force participation, a lack of jobs. Out migration of talent or youth. Major layoffs, like you mentioned, John. Or employer uncertainty and investment. And like you mentioned, Connie and Julianne, natural disasters. These are some of the barriers that audience members identified in holding communities back from workforce resilience.

I’d like to now ask each of you, from your insights and observations with the orgs that you work with, what are these factors? What should be paying attention to? Even if they’re perennial issues, is there a new spin to them? Is there something new on the horizon? What’s working? What’s not working? Let’s start, if it’s fine with everyone, in a reverse order. Julianne, you were talking about rural workers. Let’s go with you. We’ll switch it up with Julianne and then to Tera, and we’ll go from there.

Julianne Dunn

Well, what’s working is, what we’ve seen in rural specifically, is some very intentional collaboration and building of ecosystems to support the worker. It’s to address several of these issues that we’ve all mentioned. It addresses the skill that if a community can come together and bring in together all the stakeholders that revolve around a worker, everyone from the actual training centers, the community colleges, especially in rural community colleges are our anchor in a lot of spaces, to the actual employers, both small and large. To the worker itself, to making sure we understand what challenges they’re facing. I saw today, anywhere from 1.5 to 5.5 million housing shortage in the country currently in rural. That’s just as bad. That’s pretty obvious.

And Sergio, talking about the childcare. And elder care is also a piece that we also like to talk about too. Bringing all the people that are working on those problems together in a collaborative way, whether that is in the town or a county or a region to address it. To then also focus in on the types of skills that they want to cultivate, which leads to then additional recruitment for jobs. But also gives a pretty… To go back to the data, to make grounded data that is truthful to the community, not necessarily what’s been drilled down for their communities, so they have a clear sense of what their workers need and what their workers are able to do.

We’ve seen some really great examples of this in the Delta. I have a chapter contributed as part of what social finance is going to… A journal they’re launching next week around workforce realigned. And each chapter is a version of this. But South Delta Development has created an apprenticeship program that is thinking through the entire worker experience and getting them paid to elevate their jobs. And there’s a CDC in South Virginia that has crossed the manufacturing divide and encouraged five to six manufacturers to share a training center to do the basic skills training together. Rather than having desperately all searching for quality skills, they’ve trained these folks together, which is pretty unusual. Most of these people are competitors. But that’s only because they’ve come together collaboratively to do an honest assessment and identify the data they want to share, and how to serve where they’re going collectively as a community.

I have many other things, but I always like to start with the worker ecosystem. The entrepreneurship ecosystem is a very common and popular economic development concept, but I would love us to talk more about the workforce ecosystem and how we can develop it and get across is probably the best solution I can think for anyone rural or urban.

Sergio Galeano

Thank you very much. Tera, let’s go on to you. You’ve been in the workforce space for some time, and across multiple systems.

Tera West

About 27 years.

Sergio Galeano

All right. Thank you.

Tera West

27 years and across multiple systems. Of course that means I started when I was 10. But we won’t dwell there. When I’m thinking about the results from the audience poll, Sergio, what I would say on the topic is I would just bring us to, when we talk about workforce resilience, what are we really asking? How well are workers, employers, and systems adapting to both economic opportunities and shocks? When we think about it here locally, we think about access to support systems, employer flexibility, how well we’re resourced at the local level. We’re responding, but the barriers are more structural. If we want real resilience, we need a shift. One, from temporary program fixes to permanent infrastructure that supports people, businesses, and communities over time.

The things that came up out of the poll, like child care, skills mismatches, transportation issues and things like that. Of course, we’d be remiss if we didn’t talk about we owe a reauthorization, which a lot of workforce boards, that is their primary source of funding at the federal level and all the uncertainty there. But programs like Job Corps are being eliminated. Those provided structured training and wraparound supports for vulnerable youth. We’re losing not just dollars, but we’re losing infrastructure. Those are the things that I think we really have to pay attention to when we’re having this discussion.

When I think about one example here locally, we have a grant that supports our work through the National Fund for Workforce Solutions. We work with an assisted living company and a food manufacturer just to help them adjust their internal practices to reduce turnover, and to help them just increase the appeal to work for them. Those little small pockets of things that we’re able to do locally, they’re highly customized and they don’t scale easily. These solutions that we’re able to come up with in small pockets and corners, and sometimes silos, don’t lend themselves to mass rollout across employers or sectors without significant system level investment. That’s the thing that sticks out and we’re waking up every day worrying about that and trying to figure out how to move the needle in that regard. And that’s all I’ll say. Pause there.

Sergio Galeano

Great, Tera, thank you. That concept of temporary solutions to… The benefit of customizing is that it really adapts to a community, but the scaling is a really critical factor to resilience, right? If it works in one county but not another, or one city but not another, then we have a different problem. Systemic versus, let’s say specific around the time.

John, let’s go to you in Atlanta. Someone talked about collaboration. I’m thinking of MAX here. Maybe this is a good time to talk about MAX. But anything else, your time in CareerRise, but also before CareerRise, you’ve been in workforce also for a while. What do you think about the lay the land in these factors and what’s working?

John Helton

I may be neck and neck with you, Connie, we’re about the same place. I do believe. You’ll remember some of the things I’m going to talk about, because I want to pick up first, I would be remiss to not address one of my personal soapbox issues, and professional as well. Julianne, you spoke about youth employment and youth services. And one consideration that we really need to be looking at is the availability of summer youth employment programs. And how our current federal legislation, the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, the WIOA, doesn’t necessarily lend itself to being very supportive of those. You can still do them, but the way the performance metrics have been set up as we moved from… Connie, go back with me now, ZTA and JTPA and WIA, W-I-A, and then WIOA. As the legislation has progressed, the ability to do that type of programming through short specific just about that summer youth employment experience has become more difficult from a performance metrics management standpoint.

If we can do anything in terms of influencing, and those people who are listening, policy makers or having effect on policy makers, the reinstatement or the revisiting of standalone summer youth employment is critical to helping create that continuum. Because we’ve also spoken about ecosystems, and I think that’s a very important concept in this discussion. Because it is a symbiotic ecosystem, workforce development across the region or across a particular geography.

In the Metro Atlanta region, as Sergio, you mentioned, we have MAX. And MAX stands for Metro Atlanta Exchange for Workforce Solutions. M-A-X. The best way to describe it is to think of it as the Chamber of Commerce for workforce development professionals. It’s a professional association of training providers, support services providers. Education is well represented. DHS, department of Human Services, SNAP. All the requisite folks that you think about. Think about WIOA plus some. And it’s a venue for a level of collaboration is pretty uncommon for a Metro Atlanta region.

Countless numbers of joint grant applications, of funding, strategies of rating of funding has happened because we have a venue where it can happen. So encourage folks, if you don’t have such a venue, please feel free to reach out to us. We’ve shared this model many, many times over the years since MAX has been in existence. But think about just a venue for professional development, for workforce development professionals. Probably no one here on our screen, and then extending into the audience, went to school thinking you were going to be a workforce development professional. And had no idea what that was. And we’ve all happened into these from social work or from even business degrees and psychology and sociology. But to really professionalize the whole concept of what is a workforce development professional, to help us become better and to do better work. And to be more sophisticated about our approach to how we help people in workforce development.

Some other things that have happened as a result of MAX, we really emphasize skills-based hiring and job quality. CareerRise, as an intermediary organization. And Connie, we’re actually an affiliate of the National Fund for Workforce Solutions. And the job quality, the work that you’re doing, we’ve been watching very closely. But job quality and skills-based hiring go hand-in-hand. We look at and have promoted skills-based hiring as a solution for employers to expand their pool of eligible employees. And then working with companies to really help them understand from a retention, from a bottom line standpoint, they have to take the time and make the psychological and sometimes the financial investment in creating good job quality for their workers so that they can keep people longer. Whether that be altering schedules or providing professional development opportunities of supervisor training, so you don’t have a horrible person supervising you. You want to stay on the job and advance on the job. There are a number of opportunities that really create a lot of color and a lot of depth to the ecosystem we’ve talked about as well.

Sergio Galeano

Thank you, John. I’m hearing great things around collaboration and coordination, the benefit of coordinating services and providing a survey and delivery of programs. And many things like braided leveraging, which leverage funds was really important.

Connie, I’d like to turn to you and SLATE. What are the factors that are contributing or taking away from resilience from your vantage point, and what’s a solution or strategy that you’d like to elevate?

Connie Johnson

Well, one thing I want to piggyback on, there’s a Bible verse that says, “The harvest is great, but the laborers are few.” When it comes to our youth, it’s just the inverse. This summer, we had over 600 youth apply for summer jobs. We only have funding for 100. There are 500 youth who applied for summer employment, but we are not able to place them. What we need, what would be great and ideal with real partnerships, not just a partnership on paper. That we could pick up the phone and call some of these companies and say, “Hey, I got some young inspiring kids, our youth, some of which who are impacted by the tornado, who need jobs. Can we send them your way?” It’d be great to have a pipeline for when the funding runs out that we’re still able to help people get placed in meaningful employment and apprenticeships.

Apprenticeships, also, that’s something that I think we really going to have to level set. Because in St. Louis, we have a couple big things, which are great. Like Boeing, their contract was renewed. The fighter jets, that’s going to be going on right here. But how many people know how to be mechanics on fighter jets? How many people know how to assemble fighter jets? Not many. Here we have the cart before the horse. The contract, great, we’re happy. Boeing’s getting it. Lots of jobs, but will we be able to fill those jobs from people in the city of St. Louis? Probably not. So there’s definitely a training deficiency there and a skill gap.

Another thing, NGA, the National Geospatial Agency. Everybody’s, “Oh, I see we got a big federal agency here.” Who knows what NGA stands for? I only know because I was a federal employee. But the average person, they don’t know what it does. And so there has to be a better education and connection of what that agency does and what types of skillsets are they looking for. Otherwise, we just have this really big beautiful project in St. Louis, but in order to have a workforce there, they’re going to have to get people from outside of the city, outside of the state. So that doesn’t really help us in our plight here. Those are things.

And then, the city gives out tax incentives. And when somebody comes with a big project, they’re supposed to work with us when it’s time to hire people. And what we’re finding is that’s a soft, a fluff, kind of a ask. It goes into paperwork, but it’s not necessarily enforced. I think today there was a big bill signed by Governor Kehoe creating this entertainment district, which actually includes our physical address. And it’s lots of incentives for our sports teams, lots of incentives to get people to come and help build this entertainment district. But once this district is created and we’re already well on our way, who are the people that are going to work there?

We need to make sure that when they have these big projects, that we’re able, and we’re at the table as the city’s workforce center, as the force behind the workforce to help get people placed. There are some gaps here. And I met with some people today and I said, “I need a seat at your table. You’re big dollars, you’re corporate. We need a seat at your table so that we can create this pipeline.” You can’t have this corporate workforce and then, oh, well, you just help service people who will fall within certain poverty guidelines. No, workforce is workforce. Everybody needs to work. Everybody needs a job. Everybody needs to provide for their families. And it really doesn’t matter whether you’re from north St. Louis City or south St. Louis. We have to change the mindset of what workforce is and who we serve.

Sergio Galeano

That’s really powerful. Thank you, Connie. And as the four of you spoke over the last 10 minutes, I appreciate the audience’s reactions and support of your answers, and the things that you’re bringing up. Before I transition to a Q&A question that I see here from Eric Gibson, wanted to do a quick rapid fire one minute. If you want to choose one or two to highlight. I wanted to ask everyone what you see on the horizon as a trend that we should pay more attention to. Even if it’s something you don’t know about but worries you or interests you.

Most times when we talk about trends, there’s always funding. There’s WIOA funds declining. But three general things to anchor us is technology, demographic shifts, and economic shifts, some of which Bill went over in the beginning. But from your view, what’s one that really stands out that you think we should do a better job of paying attention to? Can I start with you, John?

John Helton

You may. And this is the elephant in the room for many people, but that would be AI, and how we’re tackling AI from a workforce development perspective. I think of it and have begun to think of it more like, for many, many years if you had any type of work readiness training, you had basic computer skills. We’re going to have to incorporate basic AI skills as part and parcel to any type of development that we do from entry-level workers as well as those people who may be techies, so to speak. That’s a big thing that we all know about. The speed at which it’s permeating all aspects of our life, it’s really interesting and it’s scary at the same time. And just making sure that we, in our ecosystem, on these continuums of opportunity that we are developing across the country, how we plug that in at the appropriate places that can best benefit our job seekers.

Sergio Galeano

Agreed. Anyone else want to chime in? Whether on technology, demographics, or economic trends, or anything else we should pay attention to?

Tera West

Well, I think I’ll just piggyback on what John just mentioned. And say, here in Louisville, our economy is based on logistics and manufacturing, both of which are automating very fast. I would just like to remind people that automation doesn’t necessarily eliminate jobs, but it just requires workers to re-skill. To John’s point, inter-digital literacy training, excuse me, and educational pathways for various technician roles that will be needed to support automation.

What we see locally is many employers and training providers, like the University of Louisville, leaning into that and maybe providing some re-skilling and up-skilling of workers to be able to respond to that rapid automation. I just wanted to basically remind people that it doesn’t necessarily mean jobs are going away. But rather, the way we are preparing workers, we just have to look at that in a more innovative and creative perspective as we’re preparing them for those jobs.

Sergio Galeano

When thinking about AI and automation, it helps to look at the underlying tasks that make up a job. Not so much eliminating the job, replacing it, but thinking about those tasks and how it impacts community colleges, training providers and such. I agree with both of you. Julianne, Connie, any closing words on trends on the horizon you’re paying attention to?

Connie Johnson

I would just say, in terms of trends, I hope it’s not a trend. But coming off the pandemic and now into a natural disaster, I think there’s a lot of focus on housing, but workforce has to be part of that conversation. When they send millions of dollars to demolish houses and help people get housing, those people need to work. When you have natural disasters, workforce should be included as part of the recovery. That’s the economic recovery from whatever the incident may be. And I think it’s definitely very important right now. And if there’s a saying, you prepare for war in times of peace. If we have these systems already in place, then whatever comes, rain, shine, sleet or hail, and it affects workforce and it affects businesses, then we have an infrastructure in place to be responsive. And when our state and federal government, when they disperse funds, then we’re in the equation and we’re able to help those who are impacted as well.

Sergio Galeano

Thank you, Connie. Julianne, any words from you?

Julianne Dunn

Always. I feel like there’s two things I have to say. One is, Bill’s presentation about 13.4 million ready to work. I think because we’re always focused on that, we don’t spend enough time talking about who has dropped out of the labor pool. And he talked a little bit about mothers, but there are large chunks of demographics that we have just left behind because we’ve been focusing on those who have acknowledged that they’re ready to work. But mothers are a big piece of it. Primary caregivers of their parents or their siblings have also dropped out of traditional labor markets. And also, those who have a record. And there’s some already existing bridges to get there, but we’re just not spending up time on it.

 But the second piece, people with disabilities is a really great point from Bill Rogers as well. But I also cannot talk enough about child and elder care. It is extraordinarily expensive to put a child in childcare. I think everybody knows that. And not enough people talk about how extraordinarily expensive it is to get a parent or a grandparent or a sibling the skilled nursing. Sometimes it’s 10,000 to $15,000 a year. It’s not always covered by Medicare and Medicaid, it’s not always covered by insurance. In fact, it’s rarely. And very few people have long-term care insurance, especially in rural spaces.

And there are also not enough spaces to hold our elders. And as we continue working later and later in lives, we are not able to hold the traditional standards, someone staying home and caring for our elders. These are not talked enough about, and they are significant impacts on the workforce because people are dropping out to care for others. And they don’t have income, and then they become dependent on other resources. It needs to be talked about. Just as hand in hand Connie talked about housing, we need to talk about child care and elder care and some kind of systematic solution.

We lost a lot of child care places in the pandemic, have never reopened, and they just keep closing. And if you’ve ever been into a… Yeah, there’s a lot to talk about there, and this needs to be talked about more, and we need more data on it and more money available for it. We talk about child care, but we don’t really talk about what it means. And same for elder care.

Sergio Galeano

Thanks, Julianne. If you all look at the comments, a lot of people are agreeing on the importance of this topic that you brought up, and thanking you all for the opportunity. We’re tight on time, but I at least wanted to elevate a question from one member of the audience. And to give some context, when you look at labor force participation over the last decades, you see a bit of an X. One is female labor force participation, as they entered the working population over the decades it went up, and we’ve seen great strides and improvements in female participation. But it has hit a bit of a barrier, and we ought to work on that. And on male labor force participation, although it was a stronghold for many years, the dynamic has changed, and we have males not participating as fully. And today we have this general topic on both genders on just disconnected youth, on people who are neither working or in school.

We don’t have time to get into it, but I think these are the kind of demographic things that we speak to. And I’m glad that at least two of you here are involved, including my county, on which I serve in the workforce board on summer youth programs. I know that we always declining in funds, apprenticeships provide good opportunities. Job Corps being eliminated is a challenge and opportunity. But I know that all youth investment is not Job Corps. And that collectively through various mechanisms, graded leverage and funding, and even workforce boards that have 501c3 setups will find innovative ways to serve that.

I do hope the federal environment improves for everyone, and I thank you all for your input. I just really want to emphasize this is one of many conversations. What we hear from you and the audience is what fuels our engagement and research at the Federal Reserve. I want to take time to thank Tera, Julianne, John, and Connie for joining us. Let this be one of many conversations. And I hope everyone in the audience can walk away affirming something you already knew, more economic information, a question, an interest. And anger or happiness, anything. We didn’t think we were going to be in workforce. In grammar school that’s the common joke. But we are here and we’re motivated to do the work as public servants in our organization.

Thank you for joining. Before we officially close, I’ll pass it to Sydney for some closing remarks. Thank you, everyone.

Sydney Diavua

Thank you, Sergio, and thank you, Bill. And thank you to all of our colleagues who brought together this phenomenal webinar. And thank you to our speakers for the insightful information and for engaging the audience around this really important topic. And attendees, thank you for spending your valuable time with us today.

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