Despite nearly eight months of a global pandemic that has brought wide-ranging damage to Connecticut’s economy and spiked unemployment levels, the state’s core workforce challenges remain mostly unchanged.
That’s according to the leaders of the Governor’s Workforce Council, a group of two dozen business executives, education leaders and other officials tasked by Gov. Ned Lamont with formulating a statewide strategy for developing the workforce of the future.
The council published that strategy on Wednesday, which calls for an extensive array of partnerships, pilot programs, new technology and other changes involving the state’s K-12 and higher education systems as well as its workforce development boards.
The strategy calls for a wide range of initiatives, some of which include creating a statewide credential registry, improving the capacity of the childcare system, piloting sector-based training programs in health care, manufacturing and other high-priority industries, developing a high school career advising system, and using data to better track the performance of the workforce development system.
The strategy sets milestones for each initiative, and many of the deadlines are Dec. 2021.
In an introductory letter to the report, Lamont wrote that the plan is a roadmap to achieve goals that include growing the state’s economy and giving residents equitable, lifelong pathways to career advancement that also meet the needs of employers.
“This plan asks all of us to play a role in our society that reaches beyond our narrow self-interest,” Lamont said. “This plan now requires an ongoing, relentless pursuit by our leaders, business owners and present and future workers to do things better than they have ever been done before.”
When the council first convened 11 months ago, unemployment was low. That’s changed due to COVID-19, but the technological changes and talent shortages, such as in the manufacturing industry, haven’t gone away, council leaders, including chairman Garrett Moran, wrote in the report.
Indeed, many lower-wage workers have lost their jobs during the pandemic, and many of those positions won’t return, they said.
“The economy is set to take a different shape, accelerating the changes that had been unfolding prior to the crisis,” they wrote. “The urgent need to upskill our workforce hasn’t disappeared because of the pandemic. Instead it has gained greater urgency and has been complicated by the added requirements of a major recession.”
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