The aging of mainly Caucasian Americans born after World War II coupled with an immigration increase in the racial and ethnic composition of the country “have huge implications” for how employers “allocate resources and make decisions about education, training and hiring,” according to a March Brookings Institution analysis.
“As Minnesota and the region go, so goes the nation, which is becoming ever more diversified, with an overall decline in the percentage of whites, and increase in people of color,” states author Jennifer Bradley in “The Changing Face of the Heartland: Preparing America’s Diverse Workforce for Tomorrow.”
Immigration, long driving Minnesota’s growth, has transformed over decades from Scandinavians and Germans to “a surprisingly wide array of countries and communities, and these more recent immigrants tend to be people of color rather than whites,” Bradley explains. Minnesota, she reports, is home to a 21 percent share each of Southeast Asians and Africans, compared to the respective 10 percent and four percent of the total population in the United States.
The resulting educational and employment gaps between the races are significant, she notes, with 85 percent of whites in Minnesota graduating from high school on time in 2013, compared to 58 percent of Hispanics, 57 percent of blacks (U.S.-born and immigrants), and 49 percent of Native Americans. The Twin Cities of Minneapolis-St. Paul maintain the nation’s largest employment gap among working-age whites (79 percent) compared to working-age people of color (65 percent).
Those distinctions, the study continues, point to a lack of action through the years to remedy the situation, which worsened during the Great Recession. While several organizations and grants fund educational and employment preparedness and opportunities for non-white residents, Bradley’s work acknowledges that a more rapid pace of improvement is necessary to sustain Minnesota’s growth, and likely that of the nation.
Five Long Range Forces
A study by the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) in 2012 identified 40 million workers across the advanced economies of the world as being unemployed, while examining five long-range forces influencing employment: technology and the changing nature of work, skill mismatches, geographic mismatches, untapped talent and disparity in income growth. Those five forces significantly impact incomes, especially among poorer individuals, who face low or declining levels of income growth and corresponding declines in living standards and social stability.
“In 2011, when U.S. employment exceeded nine percent, an MGI survey found that 30 percent of U.S. companies had positions open for more than six months that they could not fill…Despite rising educational attainment across most advanced economies, by 2020, the U.S. may have 1.5 million too few workers with college or graduate degrees and nearly six million too many who have not completed high school,” MGI reports.
The “growing pools of underused talent” include older workers, women and youth, according to MGI, especially “young people who leave school without the skills they need to be hired or who never land an entry-level job where they can acquire skills suffer lifelong learning handicaps and are more likely to require social services.”
In Yavapai County, census.gov reports 96.4 percent of the population under age 18 (nearly 18 percent), age 65+ (about 27 percent), or female (51.2 percent). About 83 percent of the county’s residents in 2013 were white alone (not Hispanic or Latino), 14 percent Hispanic or Latino, 2.1 percent American Indian and Alaska Native alone, 1 percent Asian alone, 0.8 percent black alone, and 2.1 percent two or more races. The Hispanic population more than doubled between the 1970s and 2013.
Persons below the poverty level 2009-2013 in Yavapai County totaled 15.8 percent, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, equaling 34,573 people in the total population of 218,814. Median 2009-2013 household income was $42,987, representing the point at which half of all households were below and half above the referenced level. Federal poverty guidelines include individuals earning $11,770 a year and four-person households at $24,250 a year.
Post-Recession Uptick
In the aftermath of the Great Recession, business in the Quad Cities “is picking up, especially homes and cars,” relayed Arizona District 1 Rep. Karen Fann to area business leaders May 19. Fann and other legislative and civic leaders spoke at a quarterly breakfast coordinated by the Prescott Valley Chamber of Commerce.
Characterizing the economy as “moving forward,” Fann described Governor Doug Ducey as “pro-economic development, pro-business” and working toward a “number one goal to put Arizona back on economic sound footing.”
Arizona District 1 Sen. Steve Pierce agreed that the economy is “a little bit better than 2009 and 2010, but not like it should be. We are not where we want to be. The state is stretched for funds, just like you and me.”
Within the Prescott Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), the average hourly wage of $18.64 reported by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics in April is about 18 percent below the national average of $22.71. Of the 22 major occupational groups reported, only healthcare practitioner and technical, at an average $38.50 per hour, exceeded the national average. Legal, management and computer and mathematical occupations were among 13 groups with “significantly lower wages” than national averages.
Employment Concentrations
Employment concentrations in five groups in the MSA exceeded national numbers: food preparation and serving-related, construction and extraction, and sales and related. Those statistics track with the region’s tourism, appealing lifestyle and allure for retirees.
Construction has not regained its high concentrations in the area since the recession, but new builds and real estate sales continue to improve, although not at the same rates of the boom. Health care provides significant employment opportunities and the area’s economic developers continue to seek manufacturing and other related jobs for the 57,000 civilians tallied in the Quad Cities 2013 labor force.
The state’s focus on Career and Technical Education Centers (CTECs) and Joint Technical Education Districts (JTEDs) offers training and additional opportunities for careers not requiring a four-year degree, while the area’s college and university programs enhance their advanced career tracks. Experts agree, the complexion of the Quad Cities workforce is changing, but not at the same speed as the Minnesota fast track.
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