Job Creation Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

WorkForce West Virginia; Duties And Direction

Randy Yohe spoke with Scott Adkins, acting commissioner of Workforce West Virginia, on the job seeking services the agency provides — and how they are working

In the “About Us” tab on the Workforce West Virginia website it says “Besides overseeing the state unemployment insurance program, the agency has a network of workforce development services to provide citizens and employers the opportunity to compete in today’s global economy.”

For our series “Help Wanted, Understanding West Virginia’s Labor Force,” Randy Yohe spoke with Scott Adkins, acting commissioner of Workforce West Virginia, on the job seeking services the agency provides — and how they are working.

Yohe: The state continues to go full steam ahead on economic development with a variety of businesses and industries and corporations coming to West Virginia. What are your departments and divisions and Workforce West Virginia doing to develop the workforce needed to fill those positions?

Adkins: Well, here at Workforce, most folks think that we do just unemployment, but a huge component of the work and resources that we have is working with employers. We help employers recruit qualified applicants, virtual job fairs, on-site job fairs, we do upscaling retraining, we work with the Higher Education Policy Commission, DHHR, a bunch of different partners at the state level, to make sure we’re finding the right people for the right job.

Yohe: How do you gauge success there?

Adkins: Jobs, it’s all about jobs. At the end of the day, we take somebody who is unemployed or underemployed and put them in a position where they can succeed. At the same time, meeting whatever need that employer has, which is critical. I tell folks all the time at Workforce, the employers are our customers, and working from that angle, we’re able to help employers locate qualified workers

daily.

Yohe: And it covers a variety of skill sets?

Adkins: It does. If you think about the economy in West Virginia, it’s very diversified. A lot of folks think that we just do coal. Well, 40 years ago, we just did coal, not today. We are very diversified.

Yohe: I hear the term “childcare” tossed about when it comes to being able to keep and maintain and recruit and retain a workforce. How important is it right now, in 2023? Is that element to be incorporated, maybe from the state as well?

Adkins: Yes, it’s childcare, it’s transportation, and one of the things that we’re doing at Workforce right now, we try to expand opportunities in childcare. We’re working with our federal partners to create an apprenticeship, a sort of ‘learn to earn’ for folks who are interested in getting into childcare services.

Yohe: Does the orientation for your workers there, the people that are helping these people get jobs, morph a bit, according to what’s going on with the economy and the state?

Adkins: It does. We have job coaches that have to be familiar, not just with the careers that are coming in, but as you can imagine, they vary from region to region. So what we’re recruiting for, in helping to locate employees in the Eastern Panhandle, is gonna be a lot different than if we’re in Logan County, for example, looking for the same thing.

Yohe: Tourism Secretary Ruby has plans to fill an expected 20,000 new hospitality jobs over the next three years. How will Workforce West Virginia help fill those positions?

Adkins: One thing that we attempt to do at Workforce is to create career opportunities. If you look at the labor force participation rate in West Virginia at 16 to 24 (years old), we sort of lag behind the national average. We can work with that group of our population to show that, ‘Hey, there is a career opportunity, it’s not just a job.’ We try to change the dominant way of thinking for those 16 to 24-year-olds looking at hospitality and tourism as a career opportunity.

Yohe: It seems like there’s a great team effort among all the agencies and organizations within the state to make sure that you can get the best of what each one has, in order to get a better workforce. Am I right?

Adkins: Yes. I mean, I mentioned to you earlier that we do have more people working today. And I think that goes back to the concerted effort by the governor’s office to really drive home that every system or service in the state should be seamless. There should be one point of entry, whether you’re an employer or somebody seeking a service or a job seeker. There’s a big push, as you mentioned earlier, to get all these agencies working together. We’re not all siloed anymore. Historically, we sent you from shop to shop to shop. We don’t do that anymore. We tried to create a sort of self-service, one-stop operation across all state agencies, including folks at economic development.

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This story is part of the series, “Help Wanted: Understanding West Virginia’s Labor Force.”

Concord University Offering Cyber Security Degree

Concord has had a cyber security emphasis in its computer science major for several years and is seeing an increased demand for a cyber security emphasis.

This fall, Concord University is offering a new Bachelor of Science in Cybersecurity. Lonnie Bowe, assistant professor of computer science, said the school has had a cyber security emphasis in its computer science major for several years, and is seeing an increased demand for a cyber security emphasis.

“This is an innovative, in-demand program,” Bowe said. “We’re proud and excited to bring it to southern West Virginia. There has been a growing demand for this from both students, government officials and the industry. Our caring and dedicated faculty look forward to launching students into new careers for years to come.”

The Concord announcement comes the same week Marshall University received $45 million in taxpayer dollars to go towards its new Institute of Cyber Security.

Bowe said while Marshall’s program is focused on cyber and digital forensics, Concord’s program is keyed to increasing software security.

“We did a lot of research,” Bowe said. “We looked up standards from the National Security Association, from professional associations like the Association for Computing Machinery, and put together all their recommendations in building out our senior level advanced classes.”

Bowe said it was important to give local southern West Virginia residents local access to this job generating education.

“We have a lot of first generation students who don’t want to go very far from home,” he said. “We also have people who are in the workforce and wanting to come back, and they can’t just up and leave their families to drive to Huntington. So being able to have access an hour or so from where they live is really important.”

Bowe said a Concord B.A. in cyber security can be a pathway to Marshall University’s cybersecurity masters degree program.

W.Va. Government Facing, Meeting Workforce Development Challenges

The state government has been successful in attracting national corporations to set up shop in West Virginia. And, they say tourism jobs are ready to explode. The challenge now is filling thousands of positions that demand a wide variety of skill sets.

Secretary of Economic Development Mitch Carmichael said the lion’s share of more than 3,000 jobs created in 2022 – highlighting work with companies like steelmaker Nucor and power storage company Form Energy – will require advanced manufacturing skills training. Most, but not all.

“It’s problem solving, critical thinking, those types of things that are inherent in any education environment,” Carmichael said. “A more liberal arts education environment. But then you get to the specific skill sets, it’s metalworking, it’s plumbing, it’s electrical, and this understanding of electrical circuitry, and its materials handling.”

Carmichael said what gives West Virginia an edge in workforce development is the opportunity to train any citizen of West Virginia at no cost in the community and technical college education system.

“We have a labor shed data portal that provides how many people are available in a particular location in West Virginia,” he said. “That data is applied to a program called West Virginia Invests. It was enacted several years ago that we provide that complete training on track for an employer, and they love the fact that we do this, and that we will work with the company to design the training program.”

West Virginia Chancellor for Higher Education Sarah Tucker said the West Virginia Invests program has taken the state into a new era of educational flexibility, partnering with more than 700 state businesses and industries.

“When a company comes in and says I need 500 employees, one of the first things that I do is say to them, okay, break down for me who those 500 employees are,” Tucker said. “They need HR directors; they need people who are able to perform the backroom functions. It has people who need Ph.D.s, in some instances, and people who just need basic skill sets. So there’s a large swath and people get really nervous about that big number, but once you start breaking it down to the categories, it becomes much more realistic to think about how we can supply that workforce. Then we offer those programs for free in our community and technical colleges.”

Tourism Secretary Chelsea Ruby said there are currently 70,000 people employed statewide in the hospitality industry. She says indicators show as many as 20,000 new openings annually over the next three years,

“About half of those jobs are in management level positions, with salaries approaching $60,000,” Ruby said. “So these are good paying jobs all across the state.”

Ruby said in tourism and hospitality workforce development, the plan is to spend about $5 million in federal grant dollars on specific areas of focus. The first is education, beginning with high schoolers.

“Making sure we have their curriculum developed in the schools, that we have pathways in place for students to start earning credit,” she said. ”And that we have curricula or that we have programs in our two year institutions across the state that are ready to take these students.”

Ruby said the second focus area is to work with employers to make sure that their current employees have the training that they need.

“That’s working through programs like the governor’s guaranteed workforce, and Learn and Earn,” Ruby said. “So really making sure employers have the dollars that they need to train their existing employees and to bring new ones in.”

Tucker said Learn and Earn is a 50/50 wage match program between the state of West Virginia and business and industry.

”If the company is willing to take essentially interns or apprentices from our community college programs, and have them work,” Tucker said. “That gives them real life work experience. That program has been highly successful.”

Ruby’s third point is developing an online tourism and hospitality industry education curriculum that folks across the state can use to get basic hospitality training. Tucker said there are several programs rolling out right now to meet the needs of the tourism industry, that again offer curriculum flexibility

“We ask, what positions are you looking for? What types of skill sets would you like for us to offer? And I think the programs that we develop and are in the course of developing are going to be programs that build on itself,” she said. “Because you may enter the hospitality industry at one level, and then decide that you want to move up and there needs to be buildable credentials and skill sets in order to do that.”

Heather Stevens, WVU’s Regional Research Institute Director, is one of many who believe on-the-job childcare is a must needed workforce recruiting and retaining incentive, especially for women.

“The reason that US labor force participation rates went way up, starting around the mid 70’s,” Stevens said. “Is that women entered the labor force at really high rates compared to the past. If you keep women out of the labor force, especially the sort of people who may have children, because of lack of access to childcare, you’re always going to have some sort of compression of your labor force participation rate.”

Many in West Virginia government roles believe government driven, industry partnered educational flexibility remains key to creating the needed West Virginia workforce for now, and the future.

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This story is part of the series, “Help Wanted: Understanding West Virginia’s Labor Force.”

W.Va. Awarded $15M In Grants For Job Development

The $14.7 million in grants will be split among 15 recipients statewide.

West Virginia will receive nearly $15 million in grants from the Appalachian Regional Commission.

The $14.7 million in POWER grants will be split among 15 recipients statewide.

POWER stands for Partnerships for Opportunity and Workforce and Economic Development.

According to the ARC, the $47 million in awards for the entire region is the largest under the program since its launch in 2015.

Awardees include the Summers County Commission, the Boone County Community and Economic Development Corp., Grow Ohio Valley, the Marshall University Research Corp., the Bluefield Economic Development Authority, the Mountain State Educational Services Cooperative and the City of Elkins.

The program is intended to assist areas that have lost jobs in coal mining and power plants by creating or training workers for new jobs in tourism, broadband and entrepreneurship.

Last week, the ARC awarded another $4 million in grants to West Virginia.

The town of Oceana, in Wyoming County, will receive about half the total funding, according to U.S. Sens. Joe Manchin and Shelley Moore Capito.

The Oak Hill Sanitary Board, the Marshall University Research Corp. and the West Virginia Rural Water Association will split the rest.

The funds will be used to update water and wastewater systems, as well as remove or renovate abandoned buildings.

The ARC also said last week that it will offer funding to Local Development Districts throughout the region. The grants of up to $100,000 will help communities hire staff to leverage opportunities from last year’s American Rescue Plan and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

Special consideration will be given to distressed areas, coal and power plant communities and historically marginalized populations.

W.Va. Contractors See Construction Boom, Challenges Ahead

West Virginia contractors and builders say they have never been so busy and have never had so many challenges. They say the future will only bring more work and more concern.

Randy Yohe talked about the current and future state of construction with Mike Clowser, Executive Director of the Contractors Association of West Virginia. The organization represents 450 members, from bridge builders to bankers.

Yohe: Let’s talk about the state of contracting and construction, because it’s in flux. There are enormous amounts of government relief money out there. I know that’s affecting your contractors and workers in a variety of ways.

Clowser: The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act that was passed by Congress in November is the first U.S. investment in infrastructure in many years. About $6 billion is coming to West Virginia to improve our infrastructure of roads, water, sewer, broadband, abandoned mine lands, airports – and all of that money will be used to improve the quality of life in West Virginia. But most importantly, it is going to create thousands of good paying jobs in West Virginia’s construction industry.

Yohe: You need people for those jobs, don’t you?

Clowser: Our members over the last two or three years, especially since the pandemic started, have actively looked at recruiting and hiring and training their personnel. This has been one of the major issues with the Contractors Association of West Virginia, from the standpoint that we have been doing programs to try to recruit people into the construction industry. What we are trying to promote as an association is that construction is going to be a tremendous career. That ranges from project management to estimating to operating your equipment to steel erection. And our members are going to need accountants and they’re going to need people who work in the office.

Yohe: Does that put an emphasis on bolstering vocational education around the state?

Clowser: Most definitely. Our committee has been working with Chancellor Sarah Tucker to look into Community Technical Colleges and we’ve been working with the Department of Education to look at programs in the vo-tech schools. We’ve been working with the West Virginia National Guard and their programs at Camp Dawson. I think everyone is truly interested in training people and getting people not only jobs, but careers.

Yohe: To build things you need materials. The prices of materials aren’t quite the same as they were a couple of years ago, are they?

Clowser: We have had this issue for two years starting with the pandemic in early 2020. We’re now finding that the war in Ukraine is impacting products that are used in manufacturing. One such was the clay that is used in ceramic tile that is made by companies in Italy, for a whole host of applications here in the United States. We had last year, the Texas snow storm that shut down many of the resin plants in the state of Texas, which affects everything from plastic pipe for water and sewer systems to the paint that we use to stripe the center lines on our highways.

Yohe: Are we getting close to a supply chain solution?

Clowser: We have not seen that occur in prices yet. We still see prices that are continuing to escalate. Steel the last 24 months has gone up 126 percent. Lumber, if anybody has built a home lately, that’s gone up about 61 percent. Right now, we are not seeing any immediate relief in either price structure, or supply chain issues.

Yohe: Finally, what are the key issues that West Virginia consumers need to understand from the construction and contracting world.

Clowser: I think the best thing is that we’ve been able to work with our partners at the Department of Environmental Protection on sewer and the Bureau of Public Health on water and the Department of Highways on roads and bridges. Everybody realizes the environment that we are working in today. And they realize this is so unprecedented, that whatever we’ve done over the last 40 years, we’ve got to look outside and we’ve got to come up with new ideas to address this. We’ve got to keep a healthy construction industry in West Virginia because with all of the money that’s coming down through the infrastructure investment JOBS Act, we’re going to build billions of dollars to improve West Virginia’s infrastructure, and that’s going to create as we said, thousands of jobs. It’s going to improve the quality of life for all West Virginians. Those who don’t have water, those that don’t have sewer probably will get water and sewer under this program. And eventually, prices will level out, eventually, things will get back to normal.

Justice Says Tax Cut Proposal Must Balance Taxpayer Fairness With Economic Impact

Gov. Jim Justice said he wants to be fair to low and middle income residents, but he believes the greatest impact of the tax cut will drive “top side” individuals and businesses to West Virginia.

In his coronavirus briefing Tuesday, Gov. Jim Justice said he met with House Speaker Roger Hanshaw and state senate members on his proposed 10 percent income tax cut.

“We’ve had several conversations back and forth with different people from the Senate side and the House side,” Justice said.

The governor expects to have an analysis of the tiering aspect in the proposed tax cut soon. He said the plan will then go to the legislature.

“We’re trying to make it fair and equitable,” Justice said. “We’ve got a lot of people that are struggling and having a tough go of it that really need our help.”

Justice said he wants to be fair to low and middle income residents, but believes the greatest impact of the tax cut will drive “top side” individuals and businesses to West Virginia.

“We don’t want to flood the lower side and forget the top side,” Justice said. “The top side are job creators, and we want them to bring their stuff and come to West Virginia.”

Justice continued to stress the urgency in getting this done. He said the outcome will be determined at a still to be scheduled special legislative session.