To Fill Jobs in a Tight Labor Market, Employers May Need to Get Creative

A sticking point for employers, educators, and policymakers is transferring employees' current skills into digital-savvy talents and quickly preparing them for new career opportunities, reports the Wall Street Journal . A key problem is employers still adhere to an old mindset about whom to hire as companies fill job descriptions with unnecessary requirements and are narrow-minded about the labor pools they can draw from. One Colorado workforce-development program, Skillful, is set up to help employers get more creative about filling job openings. The Skillful State Network is now expanding to 19 more states, led by bipartisan governors who want to help retrain employees for a technology-fueled economy and develop pathways into middle-class jobs for workers who lack college degrees. Long-term, local, or regional collaborations tend to be the most successful projects, says Jack Mills with the Insight Center for Community Economic Development. It remains uncertain how persistent these efforts might be. The Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce's Anthony Carnevale notes such programs get a lot of commitment and investment when employers are in dire straits and looking for solutions, but their enthusiasm often declines in a soft economy.