Emily Stover DeRocco Speech, Employment & Training Administration (ETA)

AACC & ACCT National Legislative Summit
February 10, 2004
Washington, DC

Good morning, and thank you for inviting me here today. I am very happy to be here to talk about the work we are doing to prepare our nation's workforce for the challenges we face in the 21st Century economy.

And that economy is looking brighter. Last week we learned that over 100,000 new jobs were created in the month of January. This is the fastest growth in payroll jobs since December 2000. The unemployment rate continued to fall and is now at a two-year low of 5.6%.

We also learned that Americans are growing increasingly confident in the economy. Discouraged workers who left the labor force are beginning to reenter the job market. Employers who have been cutting their payrolls are now seeking new workers. But let me be perfectly clear. The President will not be satisfied until American looking for work has found a job. You and I share significant responsibility to ensure Americans are building the skills they need to succeed in the 21st Century economy.

To be prepared to train and serve workers in this new economy, we must first understand what that economy will look like.

Over the next 10 to 20 years, skilled jobs will be on the rise as never before. They will proliferate in nursing, computer science, entertainment, financial services and entire fields that may now be just as remote as biotechnology was 10 or 20 years ago.

To prepare the way for these new fields, a Second IT Revolution, is about to begin, with new kinds of information technology developed to serve the needs of the increasingly prevalent 'knowledge workplace' - fields in which brain power, rather than machinery or processes, drive production.

It is this knowledge workplace in which our programs will have to operate. We can no longer send Americans out into the workforce without the skills needed to succeed in the new economy.

Our challenge, then, in practical terms is to be the matchmakers to the markets of the future - training today for the jobs and opportunities of tomorrow. Our Administration's High-Growth Job Training Initiative does just that. It's based on a simple and straightforward premise: the workforce training system must be demand-driven, and training programs must be aimed at real opportunities that exist now, as well as those that will exist in the future.

What might those jobs and opportunities be?

Many are surprised by the answer. When we look back one hundred years, we find that many, if not most Americans were working in jobs and industries that don't exist anymore.

American innovation, invention, and entrepreneurial risk-taking replaced the industries and jobs of the past with new and better jobs and more efficient and productive industries. That process fueled America's economic prosperity, and that process continues today with new industries.

One of these industries is the geospatial technology industry, a cluster of commercial activities growing out of the Global Positioning System that certainly helps me every time I find myself in a rental car in an unfamiliar city, and is providing untold benefits to our servicemen and women in faraway places like Afghanistan and Iraq. This new and still undefined industry has a current worldwide market of about $5 billion, and is growing by 10 to 13% per year, a growth rate that is expected to continue throughout this decade. The market is projected to have annual revenues of $30 billion by 2005. A survey of geospatial product and service providers revealed that 87% of respondents said they had difficulty filling positions requiring geospatial technology skills.

The biotech field is another rapidly growing part of the economy. Between 1992 and 2001, the number of jobs in biotechnology doubled; biotech jobs will grow by nearly 1 million between 2000 and 2010, with double-digit increases in jobs such as pharmaceutical manufacturing, and biological technicians. Biotech companies have raised $70 billion over the past five years to support investments in their research, development, and production activities.

Geospatial and biotechnology are both cutting edge industries, but even more mature industries are experiencing tremendous job growth. The most dramatic growth is occurring in the health care field. Today it accounts for about 13 percent, or $1 trillion, of our annual GDP, and provides more than 11 million jobs. Take a look at the projections of the 20 fastest growing occupations and you'll find 9 of 20 in the health care field. With the baby boomers approaching retirement, and people living longer today than every before, the need for skilled workers to provide medical care will increase substantially.

The information technology field is another field that is rapidly growing, and where constant change is a measure of market success. I mentioned the coming second IT revolution, but we are still feeling the effects of the first. To give you just one example of how IT-intensive the world has become, the average American car coming off the assembly line today has 27 on-board computers, and in some cases more raw computing power than it took to send our Apollo astronauts to the moon.

The "hardware" side of the IT industry overlaps many sectors, and accounts for nearly 7 percent of GDP. The "software" side makes up nearly 6 percent of GDP. Interestingly, 92 percent of all workers in the IT field do not work for in the IT industry; rather, they fulfill IT functions in non-IT industries. The IT field attracts a young workforce, with nearly 40 percent of workers being between the ages of 25 and 34; earnings in the field are expected to grow by 86 percent between 2000 and 2010.

In geospatial, biotechnology, health care, information technology, and many other fields, many jobs are going unfilled because there aren't enough people with the right skills to fill them. And while many of these jobs do require a four-year degree, in plenty of cases, a two-year degree from one of your schools - or an apprenticeship that combines on-the-job training with some classroom instruction - can prepare workers for the high-skill, high-wage positions these industries offer.

Through the Administration's High Growth Job Training Initiative, we have focused on these industries that are creating jobs, and partnered community colleges, the public workforce system and employers in projects to illustrate how to train workers for good jobs at good pay with career pathways. Our work with President Gary Green of North Carolina's Forsyth Tech Community College and Dr. Crista Adams and Provost Paul Unger and Ohio's Owens Community College are illustrative of these projects.

As you all know, President Bush has committed $250 million in his new budget for an Initiative called Jobs for the 21st Century. Both the High Growth Job Training Initiative and the President's Jobs for the 21St Century Initiative position community colleges to provide workforce skills development. President Bush understands the strategic advantages that you possess. Let's look at a few of those advantages.

Number one, with over 1,100 campuses nationwide, you are close to a great majority of the population.
And with night and weekend classes available, you are accessible to parents and working Americans who struggle to find enough hours in the day.
In addition, with your flexibility you can design new classes and update existing curricula to meets the demands of our changing economy.

These advantages are extremely important. But we do need to remember that they do not guarantee the training of a skilled workforce. It is only through the partnerships with employers that these advantages are fully realized.

Employers also understand the demographics of the U.S. workforce. As baby boomers retire, there will simply not be enough workers to fill available jobs. Access to human capital will be critical, and the public workforce system provides that access.

So, we are trying to make it easier for employers and for you to partner with the workforce system. Since this is your Legislative Summit, you should know that our authorizing legislation, the Workforce Investment Act, is currently under consideration by a Senate-House conference committee. In order to make the workforce system as efficient and effective as possible, we are seeking the following changes to the Act.

I want to make clear what all this adds up to. First, we want to change the WIA through reauthorization to ensure employers and their education partners are positioned to drive investment of resources and to have maximum flexibility in their local labor markets. Second - the High Growth Job Training Initiative and the President's Jobs for the 21st Century Initiative are not new programs. Rather they are modeling our vision for the workforce investment system and partnerships among employers, community colleges, and the public workforce system to prepare American workers for good jobs and career pathways. We are committed to reforming and improving results for the $15 billion invested in the workforce investment system. If we are successful, community colleges will be perfectly positioned to be the preferred providers of workforce training services to the next generation of American workers. The President recognizes your critical role now and into the future.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak this morning