How do we fix the skilled labor shortage?

Ask Dr. Art McCoy to explain why St. Louis is experiencing a skilled labor shortage, and he’ll begin by pointing to the fact that a quarter of the city’s workforce is age 55 and older. They have savings, they have options…and some of them have health conditions. So when COVID-19 hit, they decided to find new roles that required less physical interaction. And that opened up a lot of opportunities.

According to the 2021 State of the St. Louis Workforce report, nearly 74 percent of companies that employ skilled workers, such as software developers and lab technicians, are experiencing a shortage of applicants to those jobs, a 14 percent increase from 2020. To address the skilled labor shortage, STL.works, a workforce development collaborative that the Regional Business Council and St. Louis Civic Pride Foundation launched in 2019, is partnering with 12 public school districts—including Affton, Jennings, Normandy, Parkway, Pattonville, and Ritenour—to connect students with these opportunities in five skilled labor areas—technology, health care, advanced manufacturing, trades, and public safety. STL.works and nonprofit partner STL Youth Jobs are also targeting 1,500 St. Louis Public Schools seniors through a “Learn and Earn” credit program.

Skilled labor jobs, according to STL.works, can require 12 months or fewer of training and come with an average salary of $60,000 and benefits, but there is a range. For example, a web developer boot camp can be completed in as few as 12 weeks; the median annual salary is $70,660. The average time it takes to train to be a machinist is 18 months; the average base salary is $40,000. On-the-job apprenticeships in plumbing and pipefitting could last as long as five years; the average annual salary is around $50,000. 

McCoy, the leader of the STL.works initiative, served as superintendent of both the Ferguson-Florissant and Jennings school districts. He’s also the founder of consulting firm SAGES, an acronym for “Sever the Achievement Gap in the Education of Students” and “Sever Attainment Gaps Existing in Society.” McCoy is a believer in the German apprenticeship model, in which students are paid to participate in vocational school and, at the same time, work as apprentices at a company. 

While at Jennings, McCoy instituted three similar programs. The first was a “mini medical school,” in which grade schoolers donned white coats and stethoscopes to learn about practicing medicine; some of the students went on to Washington University and Harvard. The second program involved taking students to Mastercard to participate in a computer programming exercise—and by eighth grade, they were coding with Python. The third program focused on the trades. McCoy hired Building Futures, a nonprofit with a construction focus, to teach elementary students how to make tables. At the middle school level, he hired journeymen to teach students how to make Little Free Libraries. At the high school level, students learned how to build walls—and how to rehab buildings. They then rehabbed a shelter for the unhoused population, and Clayco supported them with supplies. McCoy created a pathway for the older students to obtain industry-recognized credentials. By 11th grade, they’d earned OSHA 10-hour, 30-hour, and power tools certifications, and they could operate forklifts. “My old custodians and maintenance people didn’t have those certifications,” McCoy says. “I had 40-year-old men saying, ‘Can we take these high school classes, because we want more pay?’”

Similarly, the STL.works plan is trying to reach workers while they’re still in school. First, school-to-work coordinator La-Vanda Cotton will visit schools to talk with students about the 100-plus businesses that are part of the Regional Business Council and who are looking for skilled workers. Cotton will follow up with schools after the initial presentation to talk about which industry students are most interested in. She’ll return with professionals from that industry to talk about their jobs. From there, students can sign up for half-day shadowing experiences. If they choose to move on, they can sign up for a micro-internship, four or five visits in which they can get hands-on experience with professionals. McCoy hopes that the schools create a program that can get kids credentials, similar to the OSHA certifications. Either way, the company might offer the student a paid summer internship, which could lead to more training or a full-time job. “The goal isn’t for these kids to get a four-year degree,” McCoy emphasizes. “The goal is for these kids to get a certificate that the industry recognizes, which then gives them a living-wage job.”

McCoy has also teamed up with Lee Metcalf, a vice president at Daugherty Business Solutions, on an initiative called Access Point, which targets the gap in IT. A survey by Daugherty found that St. Louis–area companies want to grow IT jobs by 4,000–5,000 positions in the next three to five years, but there is not enough talent even now to fill open entry-level positions. Chief information officers want diverse candidates. They also want to stop poaching one another’s talent. Metcalf reached out to a number of companies and asked, “Would you consider hiring recent high school graduates?” They said yes—they didn’t need college degrees. So Metcalf worked with 25 students in the pilot program, training them for apprenticeships and then entry-level IT positions. Twenty-three finished the program; 22 were hired at Evernorth, a Cigna health services company, and one was hired at Daugherty.

Metcalf sees the solution to filling the IT gap as having four points: 1. CIO collaboration; 2. engaging with high schools to tap talented workers; 3. rethinking higher education’s approach to tech degrees; and 4. getting local nonprofits involved to help with some of the challenges that these students face in completing training programs.

As it stands, Metcalf uses what he calls “hypercare” to remove some of these barriers for students. Some of them don’t have cars, so transportation is an issue; some of them do, but challenges still arise. One young woman’s family needed to move and was shuttling possessions to their new place in the student’s car over a period of weeks. The student couldn’t get to class because the car was always in use. So Metcalf used $600 of his own money to hire Two Men and a Truck to move the family. “She’s in the program, and she’s now getting $20 an hour in an apprenticeship on her way to a $50,000 job,” he says, “but we almost lost her at the front end of this for stuff like that.”

Another student wasn’t making it to her apprenticeship on time. “The corporation doesn’t want to have to solve the problem,” Metcalf says. “They just want her at work on time, but you have to drill deeper.” The problem was that she had a younger sister who needed to be walked home after school, before the student could leave for her apprenticeship. So Metcalf’s team connected the student with  Better Family Life, which hosts an afterschool program, and helped enroll the sister to make sure she could get there safely. Working with nonprofits on such issues might help the program in the future. Metcalf says 100 students are enrolled for the next semester.

NPower is another STL.works nonprofit partner that helps those from underserved communities launch careers in technology. Amenta Christian-Robertson was a student at the University of Missouri–Columbia pursuing a degree in chemical engineering when she decided that the program wasn’t for her. Her mom sent her information on NPower and encouraged her to apply. Christian-Robertson completed the training and was set up with an internship at ZeroDay Technology Solutions, where she worked for two years, before the pandemic hit. She decided to take a break but stayed active with NPower, volunteering to speak on panels about her experience in the program. An NPower alumni specialist sent her résumé to World Wide Technology, and now Christian-Robertson works there as a global service desk analyst. NPower has paid for about half of her eight IT certifications. The prices for the tests alone range from about $100–$500.

Christian-Robertson is also enrolled at the University of Missouri–St. Louis, where she’s continuing to work toward a degree. Because she started her education in chemical engineering, she’s sticking to that track but envisions a career in biotechnology, perhaps as a chief security officer, after getting into the IT field.

“In all honesty, if I would have known about the NPower program before, I probably wouldn’t have gone off to college, because I’m set up right now,” she says. “I can make chemical engineering money, and I still don’t have a degree.”