Byline: Christopher Ringwald Business writer
W hen more than 23,000 Capital District residents are without jobs and the recovery seems to be faltering, it may be easy to forget the labor shortage.
What labor shortage?
Remember?
It was only two years ago that economists and employers said they were running out of people to hire and they expected the scarcity to worsen.
That labor shortage will be back, say several analysts.
'Once the recovery starts, the shortage of workers will be clear once again,' said James Ross, who tracks Capital District employment trends for the state Department of Labor. 'Unless we fill it, the shortage will be a problem in the 1990s.'
The problem has garnered national attention.
In his Labor Day speech, President Bush is expected to address plans to improve employment skills through education. His labor secretary, Lynn Martin, supports a national youth apprenticeship program. In recent years, New York's Department of Education has adopted the goal of preparing high school graduates for employment as well as for college.
Worries about a labor shortage began with a decline in younger workers - witness those recent summers when help wanted signs dotted the fast-food landscape. The shortage followed the demographic lump of the baby boomers. Now older and 78 million strong, adults in their 30s and 40s face declining numbers of youngsters to mow lawns, baby-sit children and bag groceries.
Later, there will not be enough around to process insurance claims, empty bed pans or repair the roofs. As the baby-bust generation ages, many observers predict the scarcity of workers will simply advance up the age-scale into more skilled professions.
By the year 2000 in New York, there will be about 25 percent fewer 15-to 24-year-olds than in 1980, according to Samuel M. Ehrenhalt, regional commissioner of the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.
In the mid-1980s, James Ross said, the labor shortage 'started in Long Island and moved up the Hudson Valley.'
At the same time, employers complain that today's youngsters are often poorly qualified for work. Charles Buchanan, a vice president of Albany International Corp., has said that by the time teenagers are employable - at 14, 15 or 16 years of age - it is too late to solve problems in basic skills of math or literacy. As a result, over the past decade business people have walked through the schoolhouse doors in order to help train their workers of tomorrow.
Locally, the programs businesses are involved in range from classes in reading and writing to comprehensive computer training to basic etiquette.
Businesses, said Linda Toohey of the Saratoga County Chamber of Commerce, 'really want educators to impress upon students that you have to be able to show up on time - to show up at all.'
Over the past 10 years, she said, local businesses have helped establish and run efforts designed to teach students 'how to think creatively, how to spell, how to use computers.'
While the labor shortage - predestined by demographics and a demand for new skills - has been pushed off the front page, Toohey said, 'Businesses really want to work with educators so that they will have employees.'
The emphasis has been on the three Rs - reading, 'riting, 'rithmetic and other basics.
'Most don't care about students learning how to operate a laser tool or a complex printing press,' she added.
At school career days held in Corinth and South Glen Falls, professionals give talks and staff booths on their work and job requirements. Each month in Schuylerville, a group of students spend time following an auto mechanic, printer, nurse or other worker through their workday.
In Columbia County, the Germantown Telephone Co. is establishing a computer literacy program for students and adults.
In tandem with a driver's education classes, the Southern Saratoga County Chamber of Commerce is teaching groups of youths the basics of grooming, punctuality and job applications - 'things you don't think are important when you're 16,' said Ross.
Since its founding in 1986, the Capital Region School and Business Alliance has worked to keep potential dropouts in school and improve job opportunities with internships and part-time posts while in school.
From training in basic skills, the alliance is moving into offering advance skills through new institutes in tourism and hospitality, finance, health care and computer skills, said Deborah White, executive director. The alliance worked with 359 students last year in five school districts with helpfrom 65 businesses. The alliance also is busy inculcating the work ethic.
White said the alliance answers such questions as 'What happens if I don't come to work - and why should I?' Not that teenagers always rush to become the model employees of tomorrow. An effort in Saratoga County to pair advisers and part- time jobs in local businesses with high school students has not worked 'exceptionally well,' said Toohey of chamber of commerce.
'Most kids would prefer to work at McDonald's and not worry about mentors and job skills,' she explained.
Looking to tap another pool of potential employees, the state has launched literacy and vocational programs for recipients of public assistance.
'So that we don't have to hire from overseas, there's considerable outreach to dropouts and people on welfare or public assistance,' said Gerald Etesse, the director of adult and pupil services at the Saratoga County Board of Educational Services.
Employers also are busy retraining their current workers in an age when technology outpaces education.
'The business community is becoming more aware of the deficiencies current workers have,' said Etesse. The board has almost 1,000 enrolled in vocational programs and another 750 in literacy classes.
'The bottom line is getting them better able to meet employment needs,' Etesse said.
One example is a 'workplace literacy' program the Albany Adult Learning Center is helping BOCES set up at the General Electric Co.'s silicones plant in Waterford.
'Looking 20 years down the road, GE asked, 'Does the work force have science, math and other skills to run a chemical plant in 2010?'' said John Tracy, who directs the center. 'The work force there is educated, but they have to be educated more.'
Previously, the center helped the United Auto Workers union retrain 300 workers idled by the closing of the Ford Motor Co. plant in Green Island.
The growing involvement of business in teaching the young is part of a larger cycle. In the 1950s, school board members typically were local merchants or other members of the business community. For various reasons, that kind of participation dropped off for several decades. As late as 1987, the president of the state School Boards Association lamented that 'the business community has been backing away.'
What caught the attention of industry and commerce more recently is the threat to the bottom line posed by future generations ill- prepared to replace today's riveters, typists, supervisors and machinists or to step into tomorrow's more complex workplace.
Many of the programs are teaching youths 'critical thinking,' a skill on the lips of most in the field of these joint business-school ventures.
In today's and tomorrow's workplace, many skills must be put into play because people are being required to work in teams, said Etesse of Saratoga's BOCES.
And there will be growing need for workers with many skills.
'The business community realizes,' said Etesse, 'they need the support of the current educational system or they're not going to have a crop of good recruits.'
