Meeting the Challenges of the 21st Century
Workforce Summit on the 21st Century Workforce MCI
Center, Washington, D.C. Wednesday, June 20, 2001
Good morning, and welcome
to our Summit on the 21st Century Workforce.
I want to thank everyone who is participating today: our panelists,
congressional Summit Delegates, representatives of business and labor, and my
colleagues at the Department of Labor.
Let me also pay a special welcome to the 14,000 regional Labor
Department employees, some of whom are joining us as "virtual attendees" via
the Internet. You're an important part of our team, and we appreciate
everything you do.
Now, whenever I go somewhere important, I like to bring a lot of friends
with me. So let me introduce you to some of the staff and customers of the Nia
One Stop Center in my hometown of Louisville, Kentucky joining us by
satellite hook-up. Welcome to the Summit, Louisville!
I think it's significant that the president took time out of his busy
schedule to be here today. His presence confirms that the 21st century
workforce isn't just a Department of Labor issue; it's a national issue
and it deserves national attention.
But we shouldn't
just look to our national government for all the answers.
That's why I wanted to have with us the mayor of our great city, Mayor
Anthony Williams. He knows that the workforce issue matters at the local level,
too. One of the first questions companies ask, when they are doing site
selection, is: What is the local workforce like? What is the skill level?
In a lot of ways, workforce development is synonymous with economic
development. It's about jobs and growth and building the tax base.
Just outside this meeting area, Mayor Williams and I are hosting a 21st
Century Job Fair, together with 128 companies from the region. As I see it,
this Job Fair is a practical application of what this Summit needs to be about:
Helping people connect to better jobs, find a new career path, and improve
their lives.
During today's Summit, you are going to hear a wide variety of
opinions. Each one of our speakers brings a vital perspective on America's
workforce. Some of their views will support the Administration's positions, and
some won't.
We shouldn't be
afraid of our differences, but as the president says, we can disagree without
being disagreeable. And in this spirit, we can work to find common ground.
I am pleased to have so many representatives of organized labor at this
Summit. In my meetings with union leaders as Secretary of Labor, we are finding
a number of issues where there is common ground to strengthen America's
workforce.
For example: Doug McCarron, President of the United Brotherhood of
Carpenters and Joiners. Doug and I have talked at length about workforce
training as the future of his union.
And Cecil Roberts of the UMW is also here with us. I've had similar
conversations with him, John Sweeney of the AFL-CIO, and John Wilhelm of the
Hotel and Restaurant Employees Union.
But this issue doesn't just matter to unions. It matters to business as
well. It matters to our country.
This Summit was convened for two reasons.
First, America needs a wake-up call about its workforce because
the trends that are impacting it will have huge economic consequences if we
don't act on them.
Second, Washington also needs a wake-up call about the workforce
because the way that America works has fundamentally changed, yet the way that
Washington deals with workforce issues has not.
Most of the Labor Department's activities began prior to the advent of
personal computers, 401(k)'s, widespread use of stock options and the Internet.
That doesn't mean we should change everything. We still need to protect
workers' safety and health, retirement security, and equal access to jobs and
promotions.
But we also need to be open to new and better ways to achieve those
goals, taking into account how Americans actually work today.
During today's Summit, I want us to focus on three issues that will
impact our nation's economic strength in the decades ahead, and shape the
quality of life of America's working families:
- The skills gap;
- Our demographic destiny; and
- The future of the American workplace.
These trends didn't develop
overnight and they won't be resolved overnight, either.
So our horizon needs to be farther out than the next appropriations
season, farther out even than the next election. That's a challenge in this
town.
But let's get started: first, with the skills gap.
Throughout most of our lifetimes, the chief economic challenge has been
unemployment. But that is changing dramatically.
The economy is still producing thousands of service and technology jobs
that go unfilled even with the recent downturn in the dot-com sector.
That's because there's a disconnect between the new jobs that are being
created and the current skill level of many people in the workforce.
Signs of this growing skills gap are all around us:
· We see it in the Department of Labor's monthly unemployment
figures which show a consistent decline in traditional manufacturing
jobs, while the demand for highly-skilled workers remains strong. ·
We see it in the "digital divide," which separates this nation into
technological "haves" and "have-nots." · We see it in the earnings
gap between college and high-school graduates, which has grown from a 38
percent gap in 1979 to over 70 percent today.
Right now, the unemployment rate for a high-school dropout is four times
the rate for college graduates.
Our economy is making a huge transition into high-skilled,
information-based industries.
If our workforce isn't ready, then the "macro" effect will be a lower
GDP and lost productivity.
But we should also be concerned about the "micro" impact of the skills
gap the effect on people who work so hard in a job for years, only to
lose it and find that the economy has passed them by.
This cuts at the hope that lies at the
heart of the American dream the belief that honest hard work will always
open doors of opportunity.
How can we build the skills to affirm that hope?
First, through education through reforms that replace a culture
of complacency with a culture of challenge.
It's no accident that our Summit will conclude with the Secretary of
Education because our schools will ultimately decide whether America can
successfully overcome the skills gap.
But the Department of Labor has a role to play role as well. Secretary
Paige and I have talked about how our departments can work more closely
together.
And I urge you to stay around... in case we announce something about our
plans.
Our training programs should be "venture capital for the 21st century
workforce" offering hope to workers that the private sector hasn't
reached out to yet.
There's a second issue I've mentioned that we must address: Our
demographic destiny.
Americans today are living longer and spending less of their lives
working. We are having fewer children than ever before. Our birthrate has been
below the "replacement rate" for a quarter of a century.
The net effect is what I call "the incredible shrinking workforce"
the advent of an unprecedented labor shortage.
If we fail to respond to this issue, the results could be disastrous:
high labor costs driving up inflation. Shortages of time-intensive services
like personal health care.
In just a few decades, our demographic destiny will leave us with a
ballooning class of retirees all relying on expensive entitlement
programs and a shrinking class of workers who are paying the taxes to
fund those programs.
At that point, it won't just be an economic problem, it will be a
political one as well.
To me, the solution is fairly obvious. America the land of
opportunity will need to open those doors of opportunity even wider than
they are today.
In fact, there may well be a silver lining to America's labor shortage:
Necessity is going to make us a nation open to the talents of all our people
including those who have been left out of the workforce up to now.
Our department, the Department of Labor, just announced five new grant
initiatives, totaling over $10 million, to reach out to disabled Americans and
bring them into our economic mainstream.
On July 26, the 11th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act,
we will convene the President's Task Force on Employment of Adults with
Disabilities to begin laying the groundwork for the New Freedom Initiative.
This Initiative embodies President Bush's vision of harnessing
technology to open the doors of the workplaces to the disabled.
We also need to push further to make
our workplaces free of discrimination on the basis of race, gender, color,
ethnicity or disability. Our laws say that employers must do it; and the coming
labor shortage means that employers need to do it.
There's another source of experienced labor we need to tap into: older
workers.
Some employers encourage older workers to retire early. But in the next
ten years, the opposite will happen: employers will bend over backwards to keep
seniors on the job longer, offering flexible work arrangements.
We need to develop the concept of phased retirement letting
seniors gradually transition from full-time to part-time work, while giving
them partial access to pension benefits.
And speaking as an immigrant, it is exciting to see our nation opening
its doors a little wider to people who want to come here and work, who want to
raise their families here, who want to share in the pride of saying they too
are Americans.
Our growing labor shortage will make us take a fresh look at immigration
because the immigrant's hope is closely entwined with America's need.
Finally, we need to respond to the trends that are changing the
American workplace.
Anyone can tell you that this isn't our parents' economy.
Consider this:
· The average 32-year-old has already worked for nine different
companies in his or her brief career. · Around 10 million people
work away from their corporate office at least three days a month twice
as many as eight years ago. · And almost half of these corporate
nomads have been with their current employer for two years or less. We're not
just spending less time with each employer.
We're also spending less time at home.
The average mother and father now spend a stunning 22 hours less with
their children each week than their own parents did.
More than 40 percent of all families have two wage-earners working
outside the home.
As people sort out the priorities of financial needs and family life,
they all face the same concerns:
A career move that leaves behind health care coverage... abandoning
pension benefits before they are vested... renegotiating with each new employer
the balance between work and home.
This is what America talks about when it sits around the kitchen table.
That's why I think it should at least be part of the discussion at this
Summit.
Some say that the answer to these three "macro" issues I have raised is
more government regulation. Others say the answer is actually less regulation.
Maybe we should put it to a vote.
My own view is that the answer doesn't start with legislation and
regulation. It starts with leadership.
That's why it was so important to have President Bush here
todaydemonstrating his concern for our workforce, and for the individual
workers who make up that workforce.
And I appreciate your being here as well. Whether you are here as a
presenter or as a listener, you too are demonstrating the leadership and
concern that will be needed to prepare America's workforce for the 21st
century.
Thank you. Let's get going.
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