Concept of digital diagram,graph interfaces,virtual screen,connections icon on blurred background.Coworking team meeting
Jobs and workforce are changing in South Central Pennsylvania
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Scott LaMar
Concept of digital diagram,graph interfaces,virtual screen,connections icon on blurred background.Coworking team meeting
Airdate: Monday, April 24, 2023
It’s been more than three years since the coronavirus changed life as we knew it. One of the most significant changes came in how and where we work. We’ve gone through periods of not enough workers – which some employers are still experiencing – near record low unemployment numbers, higher wages in many places of employment and something called the great resignation.
Many workers took the opportunity to change jobs or careers and still are
South Central Pa Works is the second largest workforce development board in Pennsylvania. Jesse McCree is Chief Executive Officer of South Central PA Works and was with us on The Spark Monday.
McCree indicated the dynamics have changed for workers. They’re not just necessarily looking for the job that pays the most and employers should take notice,”With all the all the latest news about our return to return to office, at the end of the day, what we learned globally speaking as a labor market, is that there is a percentage of the workforce that if businesses are not giving them opportunities to work remote or hybrid or to have the flexibility they are going to be, they’ll lose out on talent or they’ll be less well positioned to be able to capture some of that talent. And so I think what we saw in that great resignation or the great reshuffling or there’s a bunch of other names for it as well, is that we saw that worker mobility really took the lead in terms of a trend that you can’t ignore. Right. So there’s no there’s no longer the space to ignore worker mobility. The latest poll showed that 78% of workers across the country, not just in Pennsylvania, 78% of workers are frustrated because they’re trying to advance their career and they don’t feel like their employer is helping them with that career pathway advancement again, the up or out. I think what you say is even if those numbers are off by ten, 15%, more than half of the current workforce is looking for a new job in the next 1 to 3 years. So then I think the onus is really on employers to say, what are you doing to provide a flexible work environment which potentially could be hybrid or remote, but also things like tuition reimbursement, opportunities to have, you know, a number of professional development opportunities to grow in your career. So these types of things I think are critical because you can no longer ignore workers or mobile. And mobile, by the way, may mean work from home and work for a company that is on the West Coast that pays 20% more here than central Pennsylvania. So the disruption that’s happened is like one huge game of musical chairs.”
