According to this new groundbreaking report from MassINC, more than a third (1.1 million) of Massachusetts’s 3.2 million workers are ill equipped to meet the demands of the state’s rapidly changing economy. This threatens the state’s ability to sustain the current economic boom and traps the workers themselves in jobs with little opportunity to advance.
The two teams of researchers at Harvard and Northeastern University who authored the study for MassINC spent two years analyzing labor market data and exploring potential policy solutions. Their most startling finding is that 667,000 of the 1.1 million at-risk workers have earned a high school credential but still lack basic math, reading, writing, language, and analytic skills at the level considered acceptable for the typical 21st century workplace.
The report goes on to describe two other “Challenges” composed of two large groups of workers, each with distinct problems: a “Language Challenge” based on the presence of 195,000 immigrant workers with severely limited English speaking skills; and an “Education Credential” Challenge based on 280,000 workers who were found to have never obtained a high school degree.
With labor shortages in critical occupations already beginning to threaten economic growth and erode the state’s competitive edge, addressing the three “challenges” identified by the report is more important than ever to the future of our state.