Economy Education Washington not on pace to fill growing job gap

Washington will have more than 1.5 million job openings in the next eight years but it’s not currently training enough people to fill them.

A new report from the Washington Roundtable Partnership on Learning, a nonprofit run by Washington business leaders, found that the state needs about 600,000 more workers with postsecondary credentials than it is on pace to have. At the same time, the number of workers with high school diplomas, or less, will outpace the jobs available to them, leaving those fields more competitive.

“Washington’s education and training systems are not producing talent with the right skills at the right levels to keep pace,” said Marc Casale, founder and CEO of Kinetic West, which led the research for the report.

Washington’s job growth is expected to be 12.8% through 2032, compared to 2.8% nationally. Of the 1.5 million job openings through 2032, about 640,000 are new jobs and 910,000 are from retirements.

https://washingtonstatestandard.com/2024/10/11/washington-not-on-pace-to-fill-growing-job-gap/

Ever since the eighties this state has underfunded post-secondary education.