A new Colorado coalition aims to put teachers and businesses on the same page. But what about students?
There’s a mismatch between job openings and seekers, with about 121,000 open jobs and 106,000 unemployed people in Colorado. The new Education to Employment Alliance thinks they might have the solution.
The group, made up of business and education-oriented organizations such as the Colorado Chamber of Commerce, Colorado Succeeds and Colorado Thrives, released a report last month with five recommendations to better match workers with open positions, including adjusting the skills taught in school to better match the needs of employers. The idea being: Companies tell educators what skills are lacking, educators teach those skills to students and everyone goes home happy.
For many businesses and lawmakers, this isn’t new. Federal and state governments have provided funding for vocational programs through the Perkins Career and Technical Education Act of 2006 and the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act from 2014. The SyncUp Colorado competition in 2021 asked organizations to develop programs for this purpose, with support from the state government, Colorado Succeeds and Colorado Thrives.
“There have been a ton of them, but they’re very siloed,” said Ed Sealover, vice president of strategic initiatives at the Colorado Chamber of Commerce. He believes these programs are already getting more students interested, and coordinating to scale them up will help meet job demand.
Take construction, one of the industries with a consistently high demand for middle-skills workers — which require certification beyond a high school diploma, but not a four-year degree — according to the Colorado Chamber of Commerce’s 2022 and 2023 surveys.