Emily Stover DeRocco Speech
Multi-Cultural Food Service and Hospitality Alliance
Tuesday August 10, 2004 - 8:30 am
Washington, DC
Thank you, Dave. Congressman Diaz-Balart, it's a pleasure and an honor to share the stage with you. The Administration and the Labor Department share your concerns about training the Hispanic members of our workforce. Our country cannot afford to leave any worker behind.
Figures just released on Friday show that our economy is continuing to improve. After 11 consecutive months of growth, more than 1.5 million new jobs have been created. The unemployment rate is now down to 5.5%, the lowest it has been in almost three years.
This recovery has been broad based too, as businesses from all sectors of the economy have met the challenges that we all faced over the last several years and are now hiring more workers again. One sector that has been particularly strong on recovery is your industry, hospitality.
During that same 11 month period, you have been responsible for over 220,000 of those new jobs or nearly 15%. And that's not all, by 2012, BLS projects over 1.6 million new jobs in the hospitality industry. Each of you has a major challenge ahead to find, recruit, and train these new workers.
The Bush Administration and the Department of Labor recognize the task that you face and are marshalling our resources to help you meet that challenge. Each year, the Federal government spends over $23 billion on programs to prepare our nation's workforce. The majority of these funds, over $15 billion are spent on something called the Workforce Investment System.
As the Assistant Secretary for Employment and Training, I oversee this system and the $11 billion annual contribution that the Department of Labor makes. Our services are delivered through a nationwide network of 3500 One Stop Career Centers found in communities all across the country. You probably know them better as the old unemployment offices.
Unfortunately, for too long, that is exactly what these offices were. They were built on a social services model. Workers would file for unemployment compensation and receive services with little knowledge of or regard for the job market that they would have to reenter. The process of helping someone was more important than the results of that assistance.
No longer. Today, we are moving towards a new kind of system; one that is both aligned with, and an integral part of a community's economic development strategy. Individuals who receive training will know that there is a good job with good pay and good career opportunities available to them when they complete their coursework. Through this new approach, companies will benefit from a regular supply of skilled labor and workers will benefit as new career pathways are opened up to them.
The Administration and some members of Congress are working through the statutory, regulatory, and budgetary processes to make this new system a reality. But, as I'm sure all of you are aware, Washington was not designed to run quickly or efficiently. So, to demonstrate this important change in workforce development strategy and to prepare the system for the coming changes, President Bush created the High Growth Job Training Initiative.
As the lead agency on the President's High Growth Job Training Initiative, the Employment & Training Administration started by focusing on a dozen key industries, including hospitality, that are projected to add many new jobs or experience significant workforce challenges, including, transforming in the skills required of workers in those jobs.
Then, through economic and news analysis, our staff learned as much as they could about the state of each industry. How big is it? How many different sectors does it have? Who are its major players?
In a series of Executive Forums I joined a small group of industry executives to discuss the specific challenges that they face in recruiting and maintaining a skilled workforce. This year, I have conducted two such forums with the Hospitality industry, one at the beginning of the year with the National Restaurant Association and the other just a week ago with the American Hotel and Lodging Association. We learned that both major sectors of your industry are facing similar challenges, including:
- Identifying and implementing solutions
to workplace diversity issues and facilitating English as the
primary language in the workplace
- Retention
- Creating industry-standard training and
career pathways
- Promoting positive images of the hospitality
industry
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