Georgia’s workforce will look much different in 2025.
That was the message at last month’s Future of Talent and Workforce Preparedness Summit, hosted by the Georgia Chamber of Commerce and the Georgia Partnership for Excellence in Education (GPEE). The summit gave a perspective on what the state’s workforce would look like 25 years from now and what stakeholders need to do to prepare for the new changes.
Chamber members, business leaders, educators, human resource administrators, and healthcare professionals gathered at the Rialto Theatre to discuss how they can reimagine education and talent development to prepare the workforce by 2050.
Chris Clark, the chamber’s president and CEO, said his goal for the summit was for business and education leaders to start a dialogue about how to prepare future generations for the workforce.
Clark said the No. 1 issue Chamber members face is ensuring their businesses have the talent and workforce they need.
Topics regarding pre-K education, adequate childcare for working parents, statewide solutions for the K-12 education system, and innovations in technical education were among some of the issues discussed to improve workforce development.
Clark said that children born this year will be entering the workforce in the next 25 years, and there will be a much different talent pool than the one that currently exists today.
“When we think about 25 years from now, the kids born today are just going to be entering the workforce,” Clark said. “That workforce is going to be the most diverse workforce in the history of the world. It’s also going to be the most internationally and globally connected. Hispanic growth in Georgia is at 50 percent, Asian growth, Indian American growth, mixed race growth is at 40 percent, and African American growth is at almost 20 percent.”
Dana Rickman, president and CEO of GPEE, agreed with Clark, saying the relationship between education and workforce development can be more collaborative.
“Georgia is going to add about 2.5 million more people to our state by 2050,” Clark said. “That number is much lower than we had expected, primarily because American birth rates have declined, and we’re now at the same rate as in 1976.”
Clark said that for the workforce to be prepared soon, children today will need post-secondary education no matter their chosen field.
“If I get that two-year or four-year degree, my ability to not live in poverty and to not be unemployed grows exponentially,” Clark said. “This is the kind of message we have to make sure that we’re getting to middle schoolers so they’re starting to think [about their future careers].”
Sonny Perdue, chancellor of the University System of Georgia, and Russell Keen, president of Augusta University, focused on what innovations are needed to prepare young people for successful careers.
“I think one of the things that I’m proud of is that you have a very changing university system that has become very attuned to workforce and industry needs,” Perdue said. “That’s the virtuous cycle of economic development.”
Perdue said the 26 institutions within the University System of Georgia will be equipped to meet the needs of the state’s future workforce.
“I think we’re building a culture of innovation, exploration, and thinking about what research is all about – looking at issues that have not been solved – and creating better ideas,” Perdue said. “But almost everything changed, and the knowledge created rapidly within the last two or three years changed the jobs we see out here today, which wasn’t even thought about 10 years ago. If we prepare students to figure it out, they’ll figure it out, but it won’t be the same as today, preparing them to solve problems tomorrow.”
Clark says that we need to ensure that the future workforce has the skills they need to succeed in whatever might come their way, which is different from how he and Generation X were brought up when they entered the workforce.
“We are going to be a very different workforce, and we need to prepare students for that type of workforce today,” Clark said. “We might know some of the fields that are going to be out there – we don’t have any idea what the jobs of the future are going to be – we just go to make sure that the kids have got the skills they need to be successful for whatever might come at them. I think that is what is imperative right now.”
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