Workforce Participation Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Senate Moves To Increase Work, Education Requirements For SNAP Recipients

A legislative committee heard sobering testimony about West Virginia’s workforce participation rate on Monday afternoon.

In its Monday afternoon meeting, the West Virginia Senate Workforce Committee discussed legislation that would expand work and training requirements for the state’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.

SNAP provides monthly benefits to help eligible low-income households buy food. If passed into law, Senate Bill 249 would require that all able-bodied adults without dependents between the ages of 18 and 59 be assigned to employment and training programs by the Department of Human Services (DoHS).

Changes to West Virginia’s SNAP program have been a topic of legislation for many years in the state.

Currently, there is a work requirement in place for West Virginia SNAP recipients between age 18 and 54. Senate Bill 249 would increase the upper age threshold by five years.

Jeremiah Samples is a registered lobbyist for the Opportunities Solution Project, a partner organization for the Foundation for Government Accountability. He also served as deputy secretary at the state’s now-reorganized Department of Health and Human Resources.

Samples was called to testify and told the committee that West Virginia’s December labor force participation rate was 54.8%, the lowest in the nation.

“Employment gives an individual community. We’re talking about giving people hope and an opportunity to better their lives,” Samples said. “In West Virginia, where you all know many of our statistics, we struggle with a lack of hope.”

Samples also said the committee’s chair, Sen. Rollan Roberts, R-Raleigh, had worked out problems some lawmakers had with a similar 2024 policy proposal. Senate Bill 562 had also aimed to change work and training requirements for SNAP recipients.

“The chairman really did work through a lot of the issues pertaining to vulnerable populations that may need an exemption,” Samples said. “If you have a dependent, if you have a child, you’re fully exempted from this requirement. If you have a disability, substance use disorder issue, if you take care of an adult or a child, even if it’s not your child, if you take care of that individual, you’re exempted.”

Samples told the committee it is not clear to him how many West Virginians would be affected by this change in work and training requirements for SNAP benefits. He thinks the DoHS should produce that number for lawmakers if this legislation becomes law.

“Last year, the initial estimate was 56,000 people would be impacted,” Samples said. “That then was subsequently reduced to 24,000 people impacted, then we got down to 2,269 individuals impacted, which basically took the number of folks that were age 53 or older, and subtracted the individuals that had children, that had dependents. Then in testimony last year, it was stated under 8,000. So just historically, and I was the deputy secretary at the DHHR from 2013 to 2022, the number between about 2,200 to 8,000 feels the most accurate to me.”

Sen. Jack Woodrum, R-Summers, asked Samples about the fiscal note on this session’s version of the legislation, Senate Bill 249. Samples said he and newly appointed DoHS Cabinet Secretary, Alex Mayer, have discussed the cost of this legislation and are working toward a solution.

“He said it was okay with him if I shared with you all that he wanted to make sure he worked with the legislature on this issue this year today,” Samples said. “The timing wasn’t perhaps conducive for them, but between now and whenever this bill might may come up in [the] Senate Finance [Committee], they wanted to sit down with the chairman and the Senate to make sure that they were working with the legislature on this issue.”

Committee members voted to pass the bill but referred it to the Finance Committee for further discussion of the fiscal note.

Expert: W.Va.’s Drug Epidemic Is Holding Back Its Economy And Hurting Its Children

A senior policy advisor to the Legislature presented a sobering picture of West Virginia’s drug epidemic on Monday.

Despite the state’s billion dollar response, West Virginia has led the nation in overdose death rates since 2010, according to a senior policy advisor to the legislature.

Jeremiah Samples, former deputy secretary at the now reorganized Department of Health and Human Resources (DHHR) and current senior policy advisor to the Legislature, presented an analysis of the state’s substance use disorder (SUD) crisis to the Joint Committee on Health on Monday.

“The bottom line is that we have not made enough progress on this crisis,” Samples said. “We’re nowhere near where we need to be, and our data relative to other states, and even our own expectations, has fallen far short. We need to reassess all of our SUD strategies and expenditures through the prism of what is impacting real people in our society.”

A survey conducted by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) estimates that 208,000 people in West Virginia used illicit drugs in the last month.

“That’s an average,” Samples said of the number. “It’s a gut-wrenching number to hear, but that’s where we stand.”

Samples also cited a West Virginia University Match Survey that found 359,880 West Virginians used drugs in the past year.

“We can’t sustain that as a society,” Samples said. “That is, it’s crippling to the state.”

In 2010, West Virginia’s fatal overdose death rate per 100,000 people was 28.2. Even after the state spent millions combating the problem, in 2022, West Virginia’s fatal overdose death rate had grown to 80.9 per 100,000 people.

“Our overdose death rate since 2010 has increased by 135 percent,” Samples told the committee. “West Virginia’s overdose death rate is 151 percent higher than the best state in the country, 85.6 percent higher than the national average and 36.4 percent higher than the next worst state (Tennessee).”

Samples cautioned against taking overdose death reports out of context.

“Any downturn is positive,” Samples said. “Those are real lives that people, that are not dying. However, the trend, we’ve had a couple blips where we’ve gone down in the past, but the trends are really what matter, and from a trend perspective, we have increased exponentially since we started leading the nation in overdose deaths.”

According to CDC data, the nation saw a 6.7 percent decrease in overdoses from January 2023 to January 2024. During that same period, West Virginia saw a 1.92 percent increase in overdoses.

“West Virginia is not keeping pace with the decrease in other states,” Samples said. “Before the pandemic, we were at a plateau of sorts. The pandemic hits and fentanyl issues become exponentially worse. Overdose death rates across the country explode. They increased in West Virginia, more so than most states. I think we were perhaps third, we saw the third biggest increase during the pandemic. But the bottom line is, we’re not decreasing at the same rate as some of these other states. So we’re not coming back down to that plateau. We need to get to that plateau and then continue to go down.”

The Current System

Samples explained that West Virginia’s state government response involves “over a dozen agencies,” led by the Governor’s Council on Substance Abuse, founded in 2018, and the Office of Drug Control Policy (ODCP), founded in 2017.

One of those agencies is the Bureau for Behavioral Health (BBH), the designated state mental health authority recognized by the federal government as the single state agency for substance abuse services.

The bureau receives federal block grant funding for substance abuse and prevention. It is responsible for SUD provider infrastructure and manages the state’s Crisis and Referral Line, 1-844-HELP4WV, contract.

“They (BBH) apply for these big federal grants,” Samples said. “They’re responsible for the infrastructure of the state for SUD and their annual budget is roughly $225 million.”

Samples said from 2017 to 2020, BBH was forced to send $34.2 million back to the federal government for funds that were not used from those grants.

“This came up in LOCHHRA (Legislative Oversight Commission on Health and Human Resources Accountability) last year,” Samples said. “We’re unclear from 2021 forward, how much money has been sent back, but it is something that the legislature and the state should explore and investigate.”

In 2023, legislation was passed directing the ODCP to report to the governor’s office. In the DHHR reorganization, the ODCP was placed administratively within the Department of Human Services.

Samples said it is hard to track SUD spending in West Virginia, but the state fiscal year 2025 budget for the ODCP is $2.3 million.

“You can directly attribute hundreds of millions again, in direct expenditures on SUD, just in West Virginia, annually,” Samples said. “And then there’s hundreds of millions more we know that we’re spending that are indirect, for example, child protective services, the child welfare crisis, there are hundreds of millions in indirect costs in just child welfare alone.”

A 2021 study that includes the economic impacts of the crisis by the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy estimated that the drug crisis costs West Virginia $11.3 billion a year.

Samples also cited a Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report that found West Virginia experienced 1,335 known overdose deaths in 2022.

“Despite all the investment and expenditure, since 1999 we’ve seen a 1,680 percent increase in our overdose death rate,” Samples said. “Since 2010 which, again, 2010 is when we started leading the nation, [we’ve seen] a 135 percent increase. Since 2017, [we’ve seen] a 56 percent increase. So we have not been getting results. We’ve not been reversing the trend.”

According to Samples, Medicaid is the largest source of treatment funding for SUD in the state, serving approximately 50,000 members with an SUD diagnosis annually.

Medicaid is expected to spend about $140 million on SUD medical and behavioral health claims in West Virginia in 2025. In addition, Medicaid spends approximately $70 million on medication-assisted treatment (MAT) drugs.

“Medicaid’s annual expenditure, when you include MAT and the services, the claims are about $210 million,” Samples said. “Fatal overdoses have increased amongst the Medicaid population from 2018 to 2020, and so we’ve not seen appropriate progress there either.”

West Virginia Medicaid’s Substance Use Disorder Waiver

Since the launch of West Virginia’s Medicaid SUD Waiver, or 1115 Waiver, fatal overdose rates have continued to rise.

West Virginia Medicaid’s biggest SUD expenditure is the 1115 Waiver, which was developed to help increase the availability of SUD prevention and treatment services for Medicaid members.

The waiver was requested by the state and approved in 2017 by the federal government. It allows the state to provide additional services beyond what the federal government requires.

In 2018, the Bureau for Medical Services announced the expansion of services under the SUD Waiver, adding coverage of methadone as a withdrawal management strategy, a Naloxone distribution initiative, coverage of adult residential treatment, peer recovery support systems, withdrawal management services and the use of the Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment (SBIRT) tool to identify SUD treatment needs in the Medicaid community.

The SUD Waiver cost $12.2 million in 2019 and increased to $129.3 million by 2023. The Federal Reserve was responsible for $114 million of the 2023 total. West Virginia paid $15.3 million the same year.

Projected expenditures in 2027 are expected to grow to $161 million, according to Samples.

West Virginia Medicaid has proposed further expansion of the SUD waiver to the federal government. The application is under review with the expiration of the current waiver on September 30, 2024.

Proposed expansions include:

Expanding peer support to more settings
Sending quick response teams to clients who have overdosed or are experiencing a crisis
Providing Medicaid coverage to eligible individuals incarcerated in state prisons starting 30 days before their release
Offering involuntary secure withdrawal management and stabilization for individuals deemed to be a danger to themselves or others
Supporting a holistic and integrated approach to treatment
Education and outreach for Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and Hepatitis C (HCV) concerning substance use
Addressing social determinants of health to encourage self-reliance and support continued recovery housing offering clinical-level treatment services.
Supported house and supported employment
Offering the TRUST protocol for people with stimulant use disorders
Reimbursing short-term residential and inpatient treatment services in settings that qualify as an institution that treats mental diseases for Medicaid-eligible adults with serious mental illnesses.

West Virginia’s SUD Outcomes

Samples then shared some encouraging outcomes with the committee from this spending.

According to CDC provisional data, there was a decrease of 9.4 percent in overdose deaths nationally from March 2023 to March 2024. In West Virginia, that same data showed a decrease of 4.91 percent during the same time period.

Samples also cited a decrease in new HIV cases from 153 in 2021 to 100 in 2023.

“This was a really big deal a couple of years ago, Kanawha County alone, which was one of the worst hit counties, saw a 66 percent decrease from 2021 to 2023,” he said. “The 2024 data, which is available online, it’s looking really good. It’s actually even more positive than that. So kudos to everyone that’s worked on that.”

According to a 2022 report from the CDC, 2,400 people were living with HIV in West Virginia.

“Other positives, Medicaid, managed care organizations, providers, recovery homes, they’re starting to make a lot of progress in better measuring our outcomes, better measuring what’s actually happening in the state, so we can pivot and actually make progress on this crisis,” Samples said.

Samples also said he is hopeful about the West Virginia First Foundation, the organization formed by an act of the legislature that is responsible for dispersing West Virginia’s opioid settlement funds.

“The first foundation, this is a new development and something that I think we should have hope for. The foundation stems from efforts by the Attorney General Patrick Morrissey, securing an opioid settlement of approximately $1 billion,” Samples said. “This is the number one per capita opioid settlement in the United States.”

Drugs And Economics

While there are some positive indicators for the future of West Virginia’s drug epidemic, Samples said the state has not had any significant successes but has seen plenty of failure.

“The failures have consequences, the economic impact of the drug crisis,” Samples said. “One study said $8.8 billion a year in impact. Another study said $11.3 billion a year in impact, just on the economy, a 12 percent economic drag on our GDP (Gross Domestic Product), annually.”

Samples said the drug crisis costs West Virginia at least one-eighth of the state’s total economy based on spending on health care, substance use treatment, criminal justice costs, the societal burden of fatal overdoses and lost worker productivity.

The “drag” on West Virginia’s GDP is more than double that of the next highest state, Maryland where substance use disorder-related costs consumed 5.4 percent of its GDP.

Then, Samples addressed West Virginia’s labor workforce participation rate (LFPR), or, the number of people in the labor force (working or looking for work) as a percentage of the total population 16 years and older. West Virginia’s LFPR is at 55.1 percent in July 2024, according to the St. Louis Federal Reserve.

“We’re no longer last, and I don’t say that in jest,” Samples said. “I mean, we were last place in labor force participation rate from 1976 to 2022, so progress is progress, and we are making some progress in that realm, but the drug crisis is holding us back.”

According to Samples, the economic impact of productivity loss for non-fatal substance use disorders has a reported cost of $316 million dollars and 1,206 jobs to the state, while the economic impact of productivity loss due to overdose fatalities carries an additional cost of $322 million and 5,905 jobs.

“When you look at the unemployment rate, which is at 4.2 percent right now, relative to our labor force participation rate, our labor force participation rate has pretty much been level, but our unemployment rate has gone down,” Samples said. “There’s just people not in the job market looking for work, and this is attributable to the drug crisis.”

West Virginia has the highest death rate for working-aged populations and the second lowest life expectancy in the U.S. at 72.8.

“Even going back to 1990 West Virginia has had a lower life expectancy than the national average, but there’s been a gap that’s built, and even as the national life expectancy has gone down, we’ve gone down more,” Samples said.

West Virginia’s Children Pay A Price

According to Samples’ report, 83 percent of child welfare removals were from homes with known drug use.

“West Virginia’s foster care rate grew 61 percent from 2010, to 2021,” Samples said. “It’s 23 percent higher than the next worst state, and 118 percent higher than the national average.”

Data from the Annie E. Casey Foundation shows that West Virginia leads the nation in its foster care entry rate.

“The difference between the entry rate and the foster care rate, entry foster care rate, is just kids in foster care,” Samples said. “The entry rate is kids coming in.”

Samples said West Virginia has led the nation in foster care entry rates since 2010.

“We are 131 percent worse than the national average, and 54.9 percent worse than the next worst state in foster care entry rates, and that’s Alaska,” Samples said.

In 2000, six out of every 1,000 West Virginia children entered foster care. In 2021, 13 out of every 1,000 West Virginia children entered foster care. West Virginia’s entry rate increased 117 percent from 2000 to 2021.

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Administration for Children and Families Administration on Children, Youth and Families Children’s Bureau, in 2020, West Virginia had the highest percentage of children nationally suffering from substantiated maltreatment with drug abuse by the caregiver.

2020 CDC data also showed West Virginia had the highest rate nationally of infants screened in by Child Protective Services (CPS) with prenatal substance exposure.

Also in 2020, there were 712 babies screened in by CPS in West Virginia with drug exposure, compared to 526 babies screened in California, which has a population of 39.5 million people. West Virginia has a population of 1.7 million people.

“We only have about 17,000 babies born in the state a year,” Samples said. “It’s not a lot. If you extrapolate from our birth score numbers, then you’re looking at and not just the difference between neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS) and in uterine substance exposure. NAS is worse. The babies basically full-blown addicted, is kind of the simple way to say it. we’re looking at around 2,500 babies every year that are exposed to drugs in the womb.”

The Future

In his final address to the legislature, Samples told lawmakers West Virginia’s drug epidemic response needs to be reevaluated.

“The most important thing we need to do, in my opinion, is we need to measure what matters so that we can then pivot and organically improve our response to this crisis,” Samples said. “We need to measure every aspect of our substance use disorder policies and expenditures, and we need to tie it back to a core societal measure.”

Samples left lawmakers with a list of proposed policy solutions including:

Mandatory Treatment (Casey’s Law)
SUD Transparency Act: SUD Outcome and Expenditure Dashboard
Save Babies from Drugs Act
Improve CPS Management of Cases with Drug Addiction
Measure Outcomes of Recovery Homes
Analysis of syringe exchange outcomes and criminal penalties for illegal needle distribution
Enhanced drug testing and SUD services for those on government benefits
SUD Relocation Supports
Public Reporting on SUD expenditures and program outcomes
Expenditure and Opportunities Audit:
Ending Addiction Amongst Inmate Population
Expand Inmate SUD Services via RSAT and GOALS programs
Develop a ratio of law enforcement needs across communities and increase funding for more officers

“Our economy still struggling, I would propose that really we look at 10 core measures and that we use a smarter approach, which is really just an acronym for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, time, evaluated and resourced,” Samples said.

Samples said he is “leaving the legislature next month,” but offered no further information after thanking legislative staff and lawmakers.

“It’s been an honor,” Samples said. “The President and the Speaker have been great to me. You all have been great to me. You know you’re wonderful people, and I’ll just always be available to you, should you need anything. I believe in this body, and I believe what you do, and I believe in your hearts.”

Appalachia Health News is a project of West Virginia Public Broadcasting with support from Marshall Health.

Jobs Are Coming To W.Va., But Will The Workers Follow?

Do we have enough people to do the jobs, and are enough people willing to work at all? Eric Douglas kicks off our newest radio series, “Help Wanted: Understanding West Virginia’s Labor Force.”

West Virginia has had several recent economic development announcements in the last few years with large companies moving to the state. Those projects require construction workers and a variety of full-time employees once the work is done.

Couple this with recent federal infrastructure programs that demand workers and offer solid salaries, it raises the question, do we have enough people for the jobs?

In this new radio series, “Help Wanted: Understanding West Virginia’s Labor Force,” WVPB reporters focus on the state’s workforce. To begin, News Director Eric Douglas sat down with Heather Stephens, director of the Regional Research Institute at West Virginia University (WVU), to understand how things stack up in the Mountain State.West Virginia Public Broadcasting is producing a radio series focusing on the West Virginia workforce.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

Douglas: Explain to me the quick and dirty definition of what labor force participation is, and why it’s different from unemployment rates.

Stephens: Labor force participation is the number of people that are in the labor force. And this is people 16 and older. The difference here is that the people in the labor force are the people that are working or are looking for a job. When you talk about the unemployment rate, you’re basically looking at the number of people that are in the labor force that can’t find a job. The numerator of the fraction basically, is people working or looking for a job. So unemployed people, and people working, the denominator, are the sort of big number is the population 16 and older.

When we look at unemployment rates, it is simply looking at the percentage of people who are unemployed that are in the labor force. And so when we have a low unemployment rate, it just means that the people that are trying to work. Many of them have jobs. When we have a low labor force participation, it means that of the people 16 and older, there’s a lot of people that aren’t working or trying to find a job. That’s why we say it’s labor force participation. They’re not working, they’re not in a job. They’re off the grid in terms of our labor force.

Douglas: How does that reflect if somebody’s on disability or something like that?

Stephens: In that case, they would be considered out of the labor force and having a higher level of disability would affect our labor force participation. That is one of the drivers of lower labor force participation in West Virginia, but it does not fully explain why we have the lowest labor force participation.

All states have some percentage of their population that’s disabled, West Virginia does have a slightly higher percentage than some states. But that does not explain the disparity between the labor force participation rate and the national labor force participation.

Douglas: We’re usually about 10 points lower than the national average, something like that.

Stephens: I looked last week, we were almost 55 percent. So we’re actually about 7 percent below the national average. If we look at our population 16 and older, and right now we have about 780,000 people in our labor force. That’s at the roughly 55 percent of our population. And if we went to 62 percent, we would almost have another 100,000 people in the labor force.

Douglas: That’s an awful lot of tax revenue and everything else, if we had those people working.

Stephens: Even if we assume there’s some underlying reasons that we would never get up to 62 percent, and I can provide some other reasons, partially due to the aging of our population. So it’s probably unrealistic. West Virginia is not gonna get to 62 percent. But let’s say we just got half that, right? You’re talking about another 50,000 potential workers.

Douglas: That’s human beings who are already here. We’re talking about human beings who are sitting here in West Virginia, who could potentially be working, and they’re just not.

Stephens: One of the criticisms of the standard labor force participation rate is that it’s people 16 and older. The older part of that population, that part in retirement age, they may just be collecting Social Security or living off of some retirement savings. And so they may not have a reason to want to go back into the labor force. I looked at the demographic numbers for the state of West Virginia, and since 2010, West Virginia has lost about 77,000 people from its population. And at the same time, the share of our population that is over 65 and older, has increased from 16 percent to 20 percent. We have a smaller population, and of that smaller population, more of them are over 65 or older.

So part of our current labor force participation rate, obviously, is being driven by that denominator, that population, more of them are over 65. Now, that doesn’t explain the long-term trends that you mentioned. The other thing I noted was during that same time period, it looks like we actually lost about 100,000 people between ages 18 and 64.

Douglas: In the primary workforce, we lost 100,000 people?

Stephens: Yes, more than 100,000 people. Our population overall is down. And it’s down more in the working age population.

In some recent research that I did, that I published with one of my former graduate students and another faculty member at WVU, we actually found that one driver nationally, of losing working age population, can be when there’s a spike in opioid overdoses. And so it could be, on a population weighted basis, we are still, statewide, at the top, or one of the top places in terms of those opioid overdoses.

Our research shows it could be a tipping point. People in that working age population, maybe there aren’t a lot of opportunities. And then this is sort of like the last straw, “my community is just not where I want to live anymore.” I don’t know if that’s the reason. But that’s one potential reason that we’re seeing that out-migration.

Douglas: The numbers aren’t great enough for overdose deaths themselves, but just people saying, “Alright, I’ve had enough of my community, I’m leaving here for someplace better.”

Stephens: There is some evidence from our research, not specific to West Virginia, but nationally, our research shows that, that can be sort of a tipping point for out-migration of primarily working age people. The other thing that I noted in a meeting a couple weeks ago with some folks at the Federal Bureau of Economic Analysis, is that while some measures they were touting was that West Virginia doesn’t have a lot of income inequality. They were ranking states by income inequality. And I said the problem with that is that part of the reason we don’t have high income inequality is that our incomes are highly compressed downward.

So if you even go to the Workforce West Virginia website, and you look at the average annual wage for West Virginia, it is $17,000 below the national average. And that is pretty significant. It relates back to this discussion of labor force participation in economics. In labor economics, we have this theory called your “reservation wage,” which is, I need to make a certain level of wages in order for it to be worth it for me to go to work.

If wages are compressed downward, it might be that part of our persistent labor force participation rate is that there’s enough people that can’t justify taking a job because of the commuting cost, or those who have young children, the cost of of childcare, that it’s not worth it to work and live in. Salaries can prevent some portion of the population from entering the labor force. I am not saying it’s the only reason, but it is one potential reason.

Douglas: Do we have enough people to support some of this economic development? Do we have enough people who can work the tourism jobs? What does it take to get people off the sidelines?

Stephens: One thing is making sure they can make enough money, making sure that there’s access to childcare for those in the working age population. The reason that U.S. labor force participation rates went way up starting around the mid ’70s, is that women entered the labor force at really high rates compared to the past. If you keep women out of the labor force because of lack of access to childcare you’re always going to have some sort of compression of your labor force participation rate. I think it’s important to be thinking about access, and especially that there are some issues with lack of childcare access in the state, and especially in places that make it convenient for you to get to your job and take your kid to childcare. That’s one potential thing that, but again, salaries overall are highly compressed downward.

You mentioned some of the big sectors like education and health care. We’re not paying in the state the same kinds of salaries that other states are paying. If you’re a teacher, for example, you can go to Pennsylvania and make a lot more. You can go to Virginia and make a lot more. So that can be a problem when it comes to recruiting educators. Tourism jobs, historically, everywhere, are not the highest paid jobs and they’re highly seasonal. Before we got started, we were talking a bit about bringing in international workers to help out in the high tourism seasons. You see this a lot in national parks, where the lodges at national parks are almost all staffed by international workers. The seasonal nature of that work, where if I’m someone living in that community, I need a job that’s year-round, not one that pays me for six months a year, because I’m supporting a family and I’m trying to live there full-time.

These are all some of the things that might bring people back into the labor force. More support in terms of childcare and higher wages. Trying to figure out how to balance this seasonal nature. Tourism work isn’t going to solve everything. The aging of our population means that we’re going to have a persistently lower labor force participation rate. Another reason that we may have lower labor force participation is that we have a significantly lower level of higher education graduates in our state compared to the nation.

If you look at the share of the population with a bachelor’s degree or higher, nationally, it’s 33.7 percent. And we have only 21.8 percent of our population with a bachelor’s degree or higher. I may work at a university, but I’m not ever advocating that everyone needs a bachelor’s degree. But we have a very high, high school graduation rate in this state. We graduate a lot of our students. But the thing that I’m not sure we are doing as good of a job at is getting those high school graduates into some sort of post-high school training that makes them more marketable for jobs that exist.

This could be a two-week certificate program that gets them some kind of training in programming, and then they can get hired and get additional training by their employer. But I think we’re stagnating out at that high school graduation. And so our workforce isn’t as trained, that makes them less marketable, it makes it harder for them to find jobs, and probably makes people discouraged and could be contributing to the slower labor force participation.

Douglas: There’s no easy answer to this, is there?

Stephens: I think that we need to chip away at thinking about what can be done. I think that things like improving access to childcare is one really big one that would bring some people back into the labor force. I think identifying training opportunities that would make people who maybe are out of the labor force get the skills they need to be prepared for jobs that do exist. I’ve been talking to some folks in the New River Gorge area who are putting together a working group to bring together various educational institutions, and think about these training programs to get people ready for jobs.

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