The following guest post is from a young professional job seeker Brandon Turner who has voiced his opinion in the past about the disconnect between young professional recent college gradautes and the local labor market. Below is Brandon’s response to a recent study and article about the same situation in North Carolina.
Employers have been well informed by economists of the impending worker crisis that will strike the United States. Studies have shown that there are not enough workers in Generations X and Y to replace the retiring baby boomers who presently makes up a significant portion of the workforce. A sobering article in the Raleigh News and Observer paints a picture of just how bad the worker shortage will be, and more shocking, how soon it will occur.
A commission of business, government, and community leaders was established by the University of North Carolina education system to determine the future direction of the system. The commission has determined that the state of North Carolina will need 400,000 workers with a minimum of a Bachelor’s Degree by the year 2014. However, the UNC system will only graduate approximately 254,000 by 2014, resulting in a worker deficit of 146,000 people. The commission will set up discussion meetings across the state with business and community leaders, as well as citizens, to determine what direction the UNC system must take.
This will have major implications for the Lynchburg/Roanoke/NRV region. Leaders of this area are well aware of the “brain drain” that has been occurring for years. Now there is a tremendous vacuum beginning to occur in North Carolina, and it will continue to suck up the young professionals from western Virginia. The simple law of supply and demand demonstrates this; as supply decreases and demand increases then prices will rise. The supply of educated workers is dropping and the demand for these workers is rapidly increasing, resulting in businesses having to increase salaries to attract top talent. Salaries in the big cities of North Carolina are already, in many instances, double that of this region. A clear example is one I heard just the other day; a company in the Lynchburg area recently hired a mid-level programmer fresh out of college with a starting salary of $12 per hour. However, in the Raleigh area, this individual could easily find a job making $50,000+ yearly. With salaries rising even higher in North Carolina in the near future, one can easily see why young professionals are leaving western Virginia in droves.
Governments and businesses must work hard to attract and retain young professionals. Government leaders must capitalize on Virginia’s position as the most business friendly state in the U.S. (as ranked by Forbes magazine) to recruit high-paying jobs, such as those found in biotechnology and IT. In addition, the region’s towns and cities are well ranked in national magazines in terms of amenities, environment, and quality-of-life issues, all of which are very appealing when recruiting new companies. Leaders must also work with the area’s dozen or so colleges to create a dynamic, entrepreneurial atmosphere which makes it easier for young professionals to create businesses, and then work with these young companies to help them grow and flourish in this area.
Business leaders must also do their part to implement policies to attract and retain a younger, highly educated workforce. This will be difficult for an area such as the Lynchburg/Roanoke/NRV region, which has always viewed itself as somewhat sheltered from the global economy. Businesses must focus on improving work/life balance, offer training programs/apprenticeships to give college graduates experience with the company, offer better career advancement opportunities, and increase salaries to become more competitive with the dynamic economies of cities such as Raleigh and Charlotte. Businesses must also reach out to colleges to recruit young professionals. Business leaders sometimes state that there is a lack of qualified applicants in the Western Virginia region, yet our three largest universities, Virginia Tech, Liberty, and Radford, have a combined population of well over 45,000 students. It is obvious that the talent is there, but the networking between businesses and students must be continuously improved.
Western Virginia is graduating thousands upon thousands of college students every year, and our neighbor to the south is siphoning those graduates away. Add to that the rapidly growing economies of Northern Virginia, Richmond, and the Hampton Roads regions, and this area faces a serious threat in the future. If a business in this area currently has 100 Bachelor’s Degree workers and 75 will retire in the next 10 years, how will the company fill those vacancies factoring in the extremely stiff competition from all around? North Carolina should be commended for recognizing the upcoming predicament with which they will be dealing. Perhaps it would be in the best interest of our region if our local governments and colleges work together as one entity to create solutions for the upcoming shortage of qualified workers. We have heard for years of the crisis of the boomers retiring and shortage of an educated workforce, but it has always been a problem that has been viewed as years down the road. The dilemma is that North Carolina has identified a major crisis by the year 2014. Remember, we are almost in 2008, so we are 6 years away from immense worker shortages. Forget the boomer crisis of the future, because it is already here.
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