Emily Stover DeRocco Speeches

RemedyTemp, Inc. Labor Day Webcast
Thursday, September 4, 2003

Thank you, Greg Palmer, for giving me the opportunity to participate in this innovative forum. It's great to be able to speak with your customers and employees this way, and I'm looking forward to the presentations and the discussions with the other panelists, Dr. Ed Lawler and Gary Schlossberg.

As you know, I have the privilege of serving President Bush at the Department of Labor. I've seen firsthand his commitment to creating jobs and expanding opportunities here at home. He's led the way to new incentives for entrepreneurship and to tax cuts that allow workers to keep more of their hard earned pay.

In my work, I have the opportunity to study the workforce issues that are so important to job creation. I'd like to spend a few minutes outlining some of the key trends that are having an impact on the economy and workplace of the 21st century, and then give a brief overview of the resources the President and Department of Labor are mobilizing to respond.

One of the most significant trends, of course, is the aging of the American workforce. The median age of the American population today is higher than it has ever been, and the leading edge of the baby boom generation is closing in on retirement, leaving behind a vast number of jobs to be filled.

The workforce is not only aging, it is changing in composition, as well. Minorities - many of them immigrants -- and women are the fastest growing segments of the total labor force.

Globalization is another key trend affecting today's workplace. It's easier than ever before for information, money, goods and services to flow across national borders. Jobs that used to be done at home are now outsourced to other countries with cheaper labor costs. But America is well positioned to compete successfully in the global marketplace. President Bush's tax cuts, including the cut in dividend taxes, reduce the cost of doing business in the US and encourage greater investment in US businesses.

One of our key advantages is the skill and education of our workforce, an advantage we want to strengthen and build on in the years ahead. Nearly 40 percent of all American workers have at least a two-year college degree. Low skill, low wage jobs may be outsourced overseas, but this allows American innovation and ingenuity to create new jobs, innovations and industries that offer higher pay and greater opportunities for advancement and growth to the more highly skilled US workforce. Many industries, in fact, are growing, and have many unfilled job openings.

One of these industries is the geospatial technology industry. It 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.

Another industry experiencing rapid growth is biotechnology. Between 1992 and 2001, the number of jobs in biotechnology doubled; biotech jobs will grow by 3 million between 2000 and 2010, with double-digit increases in jobs such as pharmaceutical manufacturing, biological technicians, and scientists. Biotech companies have raised $70 billion over the past five years to support investments in their research, development, and production activities.

These are 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. With the baby boomers approaching retirement, the need for skilled workers to provide medical care will increase substantially. Nine of the top 20 fastest growing occupations this decade are concentrated in health care and millions of workers will be required over the next generation to meet our nation's health care needs.

The information technology field is another field that is rapidly growing, and changing. 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.

It's clear that there are jobs out there. The challenge is matching up the employers who need workers with the people and places that need jobs.

That's where the workforce investment system comes in. Our goal is to ensure that every available worker has the education, training, and skills to fill the gap, and that no worker is left behind.

We believe that to reach this goal we need to bring all the resources devoted to employment, education and economic development together, and use them strategically to create opportunities for workers and build the skilled workforce that American industry needs to remain globally competitive.

We call this linkage of education, employment and economic development the "power of e-three." By leveraging this power, we are building a demand-driven workforce investment system that will better serve the employers and employees of the future, effectively respond to the global and national trends that are shaping the workforce and the economy, and make a greater contribution than ever before to our nation's economic growth and prosperity.

What exactly does that mean? At the most basic level, it means that we are gearing the workforce investment system to preparing workers for jobs that employers need to fill.

It sounds simple, but in fact, as I've outlined above, there's a mismatch. There are far too many people unemployed. Yet many employers in high-growth industries have thousands of unfilled jobs.

To address this mismatch, we have created a High-Growth Job Training initiative to identify high-growth businesses and industries, evaluate their skill needs, and use the nation's workforce investment system to ensure that people are being trained with the skills these rapidly-expanding businesses require. Geospatial, biotech, health care, IT and other high-growth sectors of the economy need more trained and skilled workers if they are to grow and be competitive in the years ahead. Our workforce investment system is working in partnership with them to help meet that need.

We are encouraging communities to use the resources of the workforce investment system as an economic development tool. We're reaching out to the unemployed to help them get the training and supportive services they need to help them get back in the workforce, and we're proposing legislative changes to the Workforce Investment Act to make the workforce system more effective and flexible.

When first enacted, the WIA was a groundbreaking piece of legislation that sparked dramatic improvements in the delivery of employment and training services nationwide. Now our challenge is to build on this accomplishment in order to make the system even more effective and responsive to the needs of local labor markets in the 21st century.

Our success depends on the participation and support of men and women like all of you. We need the expertise, the ideas, and the commitment of the nation's employers if we are to build a demand-driven workforce investment system that truly prepares workers for the jobs that will need to be done in the 21st century. One hundred years ago, many Americans were working in jobs and industries that don't exist anymore. You don't see much demand for milk-cart drivers or icemen 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 growth and national strength. Today, if we work together, we can create a new American century of growth, purpose, and prosperity. I look forward to working with you to achieve this goal.