Can Community Colleges Step Up as Engines of Economic Recovery?

In midsummer 2010, the New York Times sent a reporter to the Rust Belt to talk to manufacturing employers.1 Had the picture brightened in their sector? Were they adding jobs? How many of the 2 million manufacturing workers laid off since the crash in 2007 were being rehired? The answer was unexpected and bittersweet. Manufacturing was slowly coming back, and plants were starting to rehire. But even with a vast pool of unemployed workers to draw on, employers were having trouble filling jobs. "The people that are out of work don’t match the jobs that are open and growing," one Midwesterner explained. Midwest manufacturers had retooled as they came out of the downturn, making a quantum leap of automation that made many of their old workers obsolete. An array of new jobs was available for people who could operate computerized machinery and do the math now required to solve even routine problems in the plant. These new jobs often paid better than the jobs that had been eliminated, but employers couldn’t find qualified workers. Today, a similar threat is looming as businesses reopen in the wake of the COVID-19 lockdown. Millions of Americans are going to need fast, job-focused upskilling and reskilling to get back to work. The challenge for the nation: can we supply this essential instruction, whether safety training, technical training, IT training, or other upskilling?