Re-Skilling in an Age of Technological Disruption
Quote of the Week
“Success doesn’t mean rising to the top. It means changing the world.”
Jon Murad, the acting chief of the Burlington Police Department
Big Picture
Re-Skilling in an Age of Technological Disruption
Technological advancements will alter or automate entire occupational categories at a faster pace than seen historically, creating both opportunities and challenges for LA County, now and in the future.
The good news is that these breakthroughs may lead to the replacement of low skill, low paying jobs with higher skill, higher paying jobs that are more rewarding to individuals and beneficial to the regional economy.
Rapid change will also require many workers to re-skill at least once in their careers, placing strain on both individuals and workforce development stakeholders.
The public workforce development system and the institutions it collaborates with to deliver training are not designed or funded to effectively re-skill an unprecedented level of displaced workers for new work.
The sections below profile the type of industries and work most amenable to automation, the process and subsequent implications of rapid re-skilling, and how the Coalition may play a pivotal role in encouraging the region’s key stakeholders to prepare for the new normal.
Profile of Workers with Re-Skilling Needs
Technological advancements will impact every job, requiring most workers to participate to some degree in training to adjust. This briefing is focused on workers who will need to re-skill for an entirely new position, either because their previous job was automated or the necessary skill set changed entirely due to changing technology.
The transition of manufacturing occupations focused on manual labor to the use of computers is an often-cited example of the latter.
McKinsey’s January 2017 report assessing automation’s impact on employment found that jobs comprised of physical activities in highly structured and predictable environments and jobs involving the collection and processing of data are most susceptible to automation.
The manufacturing, hospitality, food services, and retail industries employ the most workers in these types of jobs. These are also the same industries, except for manufacturing, projected to grow most significantly in LA County over the next few years.
To give an example of the sheer number of workers impacted by automation, if driverless cars clear safety and regulatory hurdles, they will displace the 1.7 million truck drivers employed in the country today.
Individuals working in occupations with high automation potential tend to be low skill with no college experience. By contrast, individuals working in occupations that will change or disappear completely due to technological change possess a wider range of skills, though most tend to work in middle skill occupations. These occupations exist broadly across industries.
The Re-Skilling Process
When workers are displaced, they must identify and, in most cases, engage in significant training for new occupations. This process is led by the employer or the workforce development system when individuals do not re-skill on their own, as detailed below:
Employer Re-skilling: Employers will guide and sponsor employees to train for another role within the company when feasible. For example, AT&T is engaged in a massive re-skilling program after finding in 2013 that 100K out of 240K of its workers were in technician roles that would not be needed in a decade. As customers disconnect landlines and traffic on its mobile network explodes, AT&T partners with regional educational institutions to re-skill for the future. Overall, employer led re-skilling will occur more frequently in the future. The Manpower Group estimates that while only 20% of firms were focusing on training their own employees in 2015, more than half were doing so by 2017.
Workforce Development System Re-skilling: When workers are laid off, they are referred to a WorkSource center by the Employment Development Department (EDD) if they collect unemployment. WorkSource centers operate around the country to assist individuals in searching and training for new jobs, known collectively as the workforce development system. There are 17 WorkSource centers operating in Los Angeles alone. Truck drivers that lose their jobs due to the advent of driverless cars, for example, would be advised by a WorkSource center on where to look and how to train for a new job.
Regardless of whether re-skilling is led by an employer or the workforce development system, both typically form partnerships with a third party when extensive training is necessary. Those third parties include postsecondary educational institutions (community colleges, universities), non-profits, industry trade associations, and union apprenticeship programs.
Implications for Los Angeles
The rapid pace of technology driven change will lead to an unprecedented level of re-skilling needs in the future. To prepare, workforce development in LA County will need to be strengthened in several ways:
Advance Prediction of Re-skilling Needs: The workforce development system does not focus on predicting re-skilling needs far in advance. The tendency is to case manage individuals as they show up for help in finding a job. There is a Rapid Response team that assists employers and employees when layoffs occur due to downsizing and relocation, but no explicit capability to predict and prepare for jobs eliminated by technology. Re-skilling needs due to automation has only recently been a topic of conversation at the State Workforce Development Board’s meetings. Advance prediction will enable WorkSource centers to better direct displaced workers to jobs that use transferrable skills and build up employer partnerships for re-training accordingly.
Employer Driven Strategic Planning in Higher Education Institutions: Higher education is frequently critiqued for not collaborating proactively and effectively with employers. Going forward, the need to predict and prepare talent to match employer demand will be critical in an environment of rapid change. This is important for 4-year institutions, but critical for Career and Technical Education (CTE) programs run by the community college system. These programs train individuals for highly technical jobs that are subject to change very quickly with technology. Furthermore, most workers displaced by technology will likely retrain through the community college system. This means that the system must work closely with industry to anticipate in advance which middle skill occupations will grow and build programs accordingly.
Significant Investment in Re-skilling: More workers re-skilling on a more frequent basis means that more public and private investment in training will be necessary to ensure a smooth transition between jobs and a low unemployment rate.
How the Private Sector can Help
The community college system is poised to play the most extensive role in re-skilling workers given the characteristics of those likely to be displaced due to technological change and the types of occupations for which they will prepare.
Thought leaders focused on training for middle skill occupations such as Dr. Joseph Fuller at Harvard Business School and staff at the Rand Institute consistently highlight the pivotal role of the community college system.
Non-profits, industry trade associations, and union apprenticeship programs will continue to play an essential role in re-skilling, but they lack the scale and organization of the community college system.
Furthermore, the community college system is best placed to mobilize employers in the development and tailoring of CTE programs that meet their needs. Employers vary dramatically in their talent “supply chain” mindset in which they proactively reach out to academic institutions to build programs.
According to the Accenture middle-skills survey, close to half of U.S. companies do not collaborate with any community or technical colleges, and less than half partner with any community-based organizations. Therefore, community colleges need to be proactive in rounding up employers at various stages of talent development maturity to understand their training needs.
While the community college system is best scaled to re-skill workers and best positioned to organize employers, the system does not always do this effectively. Job placement rates for graduates of CTE programs are low and collaboration with employers tends to be opportunistic, usually when an employer approaches them to build out a program.
But there is a huge challenge that must be overcome.
Enrollment at California’s community colleges has dropped to its lowest level in 30 years.Since pre-pandemic 2019, the 115 campuses have collectively lost about 300,000 students, an alarming 18% drop that portends significant enrollment-based funding cuts if not reversed.
A survey of former California community college students found that one-third haven’t re-enrolled because they’ve prioritized work. At the same time, 22% said they have prioritized taking care of family or other dependents. Another 29% said they struggled to keep up with their classes.
The system is at a point that it must re-imagine themselves in ways that align with students’ priorities and needs.
The private sector can play a role in helping the community college system meet the rapidly changing talent needs by developing tailored public-private partnerships that strengthen the capabilities of community college system. Where to start:
Systematic communication with employers across all CTE programs to understand current and future needs
Strategic planning based upon employer input that reflects the initiation, expansion, and contraction of academic programs consistent with their needs
Timely review and tailoring of curriculum consistent with employer needs
A results driven career services function that ensures employers are continuously engaged in hiring students for internships and full-time positions
Leaders can also look at other Policy Options that have received heightened attention as potential methods to deal with automation and the resulting unemployment and re-skilling needs:
Publicly Funded Training Credits: Singapore provides a SkillsFuture credit to its citizens to pay for out-of-pocket course fees for attending work-skills related courses. This system removes the financial barrier to enrolling in training, but it is unclear if it effectively steers people to job relevant training courses that translates to jobs.
Back Forty: Hard truths about California’s water future
Jay Lund, a distinguished professor of civil and environmental engineering at UC Davis, shared a recent lecture on California’s drought.
Some of his predictions:
I think what you’ll probably see is that the price of water in the valley is going to go up. And if the price goes up, that water’s going to go to the most profitable crops. So the lower-value crops will go out of production.
In all of those ecosystems that are not performing as well as we would like, the biggest policy problems are getting local communities and state agencies organized, and developing a business model to fund effective conservation.
California has a wonderful climate for growing the kinds of specialty crops that people want globally—almonds, grapes, fresh vegetables. We’d like to have more water to do that. We should probably reduce some of the land that we devote to it. But I think even under very environmentally-oriented policies, at least 50 percent of the irrigated acreage that you’ve got [in the state] today would still be there.
Community Notes
Op-Ed: D.A. Gascón: Yes, I’m ‘with the Blacks’
Los Angeles City Councilmembers Nury Martinez, Kevin de León and Gil Cedillo, and Ron Herrera, the top labor leader in the county, made many horrific comments on the now infamous recording, which was revealed recently. But I can’t say that they were wrong about me. I am, as Martinez said, “with the Blacks.”
I am “with the Blacks” because in Los Angeles County, Black people are victims of crime disproportionate to their population size. Black people are 8% of the population of the city of Los Angeles, but were the victims in 24% of hate crimes, the largest group of any in Los Angeles. This year, that number is rising. Continued...