- [Announcer] The following presentation was made possible by Bank of America.

- [Anne-Marie] Tonight on this Living St. Louis Special, we're looking into what the 2021 State of the St. Louis Workforce report is telling us about our region's jobs and what's needed for a strong post COVID economic recovery.

If we want growth, we need equity.

- Folks who come into the programming, that entry point, remove the barriers, get the skills, help them figure out both academic and career pathway planning.

- [Anne-Marie] Soft skills, those people, communication, listening, and time management skills that strengthen our talents and abilities.

- Soft skills that employers are really looking for is really self-management, time management being present, being on time and staying on task.

Our work ethic is extremely important.

- [Anne-Marie] We've all heard the stories of staffing shortages from industries across all sectors.

And on top of that, there are supply chain issues.

Well, as it turns out, there's a workforce shortage in our supply chain.

- Without truck drivers, our economy literally stops.

I mean, everything you see around us brought here by a truck.

- [Anne-Marie] It's all next on this Living St. Louis Pathways to Work Special.

(jaunty music) In August via live stream at Nine PBS studios, St. Louis Community College presented the 2021 State of the St. Louis Workforce report.

For the past 13 years, the college has provided this annual report as a way to provide insights into the trends and needs of the employers and labor market in the St. Louis region.

And while there is optimism about a strong economic recovery post COVID, employers continue to face the same pre COVID challenge.

- As in past years, but even more so now, the report just reflects the high level of job vacancies and workforce needs that exist in the St. Louis region.

There are thousands of open jobs right now, many of them in the middle skills arena, they pay fantastic wages, some of them as much as 70 and $80,000 a year.

- [Anne-Marie] 516 Local companies in 16 industry categories were surveyed for this report.

63% of those companies plan to hire in the next 12 months.

Middle skills jobs, those requiring some training, but not a four year degree are the most in demand.

78% of jobs have short-term training.

The skilled trades, patient care and manufacturing are work sectors experiencing the highest skill shortage.

(truck engine starts) But there aren't organizations and schools in our region building a strong talent pipeline for our region.

- As we speak right now, over 30 students are with fire chiefs, police chiefs, and the Missouri Public Safety Department at Camp S Bar F and at Beaumont, learning how to be first responders, doing a CPR training, and they are high schoolers.

- [Anne-Marie] Dr. Art McCoy leads STL.works for the Regional Business Council.

- We are transforming education to create a talent pipeline, to make it more robust, including communities of color, like never before, because ultimately as a career-long educator, I know that education is the great equalizer, but it is opportunities that becomes an equity supersizer.

- This year's report examines equity, the equitable recovery, equitable opportunity and equitable growth of our regions employers, and workforce.

What does that mean?

Well, defining a quality job is one that benefits the employer and the worker creating an economy where all have an equal opportunity to participate in understanding and dismantling the systemic barriers such as healthcare, transportation, and childcare.

COVID-19 put a spotlight on these inequities and created an urgency to craft an equitable economic recovery plan across the country.

The great American reset, as some are calling it, has created a substantial opportunity for racial parody in the workforce.

Ruth Ezell explores how these efforts are being rolled out in the St. Louis region.

- Now I present you guys with a study.

You guys, weren't involved.

I present you with a study and I say, okay, hey, I've figured out what the most popular color of t-shirt is in Missouri.

Everybody thinks it's white and black, it's not.

It's red, sometimes red and gray, but pretty much just red.

And it was like, eh, it doesn't really make sense.

But science said so.

- [Ruth] Here at KIPP St. Louis High School, instructor Trey Hull is discussing with students a hypothetical study about t-shirts to explain the foundation of modern analytics.

- That's the pretty much the easiest way to make a random sample.

- [Ruth] Hull is not on KIPP's faculty.

He's lead instructor for Gateway Global, a workforce education organization that provides STEM-based training, certification and apprenticeships to young people with a focus on underserved communities.

Hull developed a curriculum to give these students critical skills in a field of major importance to the future of the St. Louis area, geospatial intelligence.

- Geospatial intelligence is not as similar to the field of computer science was in the late '80s, early '90s, where the majority of the education was actually hands-on training, was people training themselves.

There was a lot of novice hobbyists that were training.

And as we see a lot of the more prolific computer science entrepreneurs do not have a college degree.

And so we saw that because tech fields and computer fields are so skill heavy that they don't, although they do benefit from four year degree, and they definitely benefit from understanding of theory, that's not always what's needed first, an understanding of the skills and the tasks required to efficiently perform analysis and to get the job done is really what's most important.

Again, building those skills and that understanding upfront.

And then once those skills and understanding is developed you can build on that with a further education and with a college degree.

- Geospatial intelligence simply put is information gathered by collecting data from any given location on the planet, including its geography and human activity.

The US government uses geospatial intelligence for national security, but it's technology has been adapted for use in the business sector, in agriculture, even healthcare.

Gateway Global is the first organization with an education program that's been nationally accredited by the United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation.

And with the new NGA campus being constructed just north of here, Gateway Global will be uniquely positioned to provide highly skilled homegrown talent.

At Gateway Global headquarters, 19 year old, Kenneth Webb is working as a geospatial technician.

- And what I do is I research information such as exports and imports, currencies, harbors, languages of trade, et cetera.

I make a map with some of that information and the split on dashboard.

- [Ruth] Kenneth was hired after graduating from Trey Hulls first cohort and receiving his first credential.

He plans to earn additional credentials while attending college, which is precisely what Gateway Global's founder and chair, Zekita Armstrong Asuquo wants to see.

- The program is actually called Entry to Executive.

That's the name of our program.

And so we named it that so that we could offer folks who come into the programming, that entry point, remove the barriers, get the skills, help them figure out both academic and career pathway planning, and then help them with the employment piece in either an apprenticeship, which we have a registered apprenticeship program or internships, or just entry-level employment.

And I just always emphasize that we are not a workforce program that says, you know, come here, train, earn our credentials in lieu of higher ed.

We firmly believe that with more education comes more role responsibility and higher pay.

So we encourage folks to look into what a pathway looks like for them should they want to move past the entry point, which we really hope that that's what they're going for.

- Gateway Global's mission is in line with that of greater St. Louis incorporated.

GLS brings together business and civic leaders to create jobs and to ensure the region's future economic growth is broad-based and fully inclusive.

- I think we can do it.

- [Ruth] GLS's chief diversity, equity and inclusion officer Valerie Patton.

- But what's gonna be really key to moving the needle is you've got to involve the people that are affected.

So we're gonna have to go into community.

And a lot of that is convening.

We're gonna have to go into community and we're gonna have to talk to the leaders in the community who may not look like what we think are traditional leaders to get them to mobilize, to get them to help us move from point A to point B and saying that there is room for all.

- [Ruth] And for Trey Hull, who himself was raised in an underserved community and went on to earn multiple bachelor and advanced degrees, creating racial equity in the workforce benefits everyone.

- By bringing in all these different, just different perspectives and different experiences and different cultures, we're able to solve these multi-perspective multicultural problems 'cause intelligence is global.

And so we need people who understand problems and have a different view and sometimes a better view for a situation.

So it never helps to have one tool in the toolbox.

It's always, you always, you wanna have a good variety of tools.

(bell rings) All right guys, boom!

- There are those barriers for job seekers that make the workforce inequitable for them.

And there are also barriers to expanding employment for employers, such as shortcomings of job applicants.

65% of employers rated poor work habits, such as attendance, punctuality, and attention to their job as the most frequent shortcoming.

56% said a lack of critical thinking and problem solving skills are a barrier and 53% cited the deficiency of communication and interpersonal skills as a critical factor affecting their workforce.

The soft skills have a direct connection to one's hard skills.

And as Brooke Butler shows us, it's never too early to teach these abilities to our future workforce.

- [Narrator] When you work in an office, meeting the public, whether it's in-person or by telephone is an important part of your job.

It can be pleasant like this, or it can be like this.

- [Brooke] Okay, we get the idea.

As an employee, you have to be friendly, show up on time and dress properly.

And as this informational film is from 1952, these are not new concepts.

But as the data shows in the 2021 State of the St. Louis Workforce report, six of the 14 employee shortcomings are those qualities of good work ethic, referred to as soft skills.

- Soft skills that employers are really looking for is really self-management.

So their self-management includes time management, being present, being on time and staying on task.

Our work ethic is extremely important.

- [Brooke] But while a lack of soft skills among job applicants is the greatest challenge for area employers, there are organizations working to address it.

- Yeah, I'll keep going down.

We're gonna do a refresher training that includes a lot of soft skills that you all have learned, but we wanna make sure you're ready to go.

With the first--- - [Brooke] Shanise Johnson is the director of career and workforce readiness for the Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater St. Louis and their St. Louis Internship Program, which provides high school students with year-round career development training, along with a paid summer internship.

- The St. Louis Internship Program is needed because we have a lot of motivated students who really just need the opportunity to get beyond their neighborhoods and experience the positive and productive work that's going on and seeing how they can contribute to the society of being a tax-paying citizen, but more importantly, so that their career trajectory can change.

- [Brooke] By providing students with this real world experience, it not only gives them a better sense of empowerment, but it turns out that offering paid internships versus non-paid internships has a direct correlation with job offers and starting salaries.

- Paid internships according to the studies is a game changer in terms of eradicating generational poverty.

So our internships are not job shadowing.

They actually are doing value added projects for their companies, and therefore they are paid above minimum wage for their work and all the training that they've completed.

- [Brooke] And it all starts with, you guessed it, developing those soft skills.

- 6.4 Seconds.

Do you think you can beat that time?

I want you all to figure out if you could beat that time.

Let's go.

- Can we speak?

- Can you speak?

- Yeah.

- [Shanise] We're doing interpersonal communication.

I gave you the test.

- I was kind of a little bit nervous on what the future may look like post high school, but I feel more than prepared to go into the wild world and join the workforce with all the things that I've learned here at SLIP.

- [Brooke] Elijah Anderson is a junior at McKinley Classical Leadership Academy.

And as an aspiring architect, already has an impressive start to his resume.

He spent his past summer interning at L. Keeley companies, the architecture firm behind the new MLS stadium downtown.

- One of those things that I definitely needed to work on, I would say is being an active listener, you know, with a simple nod that they aren't losing you along the way in their instructions and making sure that you're not overstaying welcomes in some cases, making sure that you're taking notes, making sure that you're giving yourself enough time to finish projects in the time allotted by your supervisors.

Not only did SLIP teach us those soft skills, but they taught us how to sit down and eat lunch with a supervisor, the proper way to go into an interview, some of the questions asked to go into the interview.

- [Brooke] The employers who utilize the St. Louis Internship Program vary depending on the student's interest and the company's willingness to onboard high school aged students, which is the biggest challenge for Shanise to coordinate.

But Sam Bush, a program manager at Emerson speaks very highly of his experience supervising an intern from the program.

- I started with an intern like maybe five or six years ago, and we still stay in communication from this day.

And he graduated the SLIP program, he joined the Marine Corps.

Now he works as a manager, somewhere in a warehouse in North Carolina, but we still talk from his day.

- [Brooke] So, what are some of those key skills you're looking for in an applicant?

- Yeah, first, you know, you had a technical skill to see if anybody's interested in technology, you know?

The next piece we look for soft skills, like a person is, can communicate.

You want a person that got good communication skills.

They're sociable.

You know, even if you're on Zoom and most nowadays in the Zoom meeting, we require people to show their face.

So you have to still have those etiquettes you know, facial expressions, communication, social skills.

You still have to communicate whether I'm talking to you face to face or whether I'm talking to you virtually.

But sometimes you have to develop those people.

You get them in, they might not have those skills by the time they leave working with us, they have developed those skills.

- [Brooke] The St. Louis Internship Program not only benefits the students and their personal career development, but it has a bigger impact on the St. Louis workforce as the students share their learnings with peers and family, not to mention the professional contributions some graduates have made to our community.

- St. Louis Internship Program in our almost 30 year history has a plethora of success stories.

We have interns who started out in 1992 working in the legal field because that's how the program started to now owning their own law firm.

We have engineers, we have almost judges, not there yet.

We have nurse practitioners and I myself I wanna say that I'm happy that I'm the director of this program because I too was an intern.

- The St. Louis region has a labor force of 1.3 million working across diverse industries.

The workforce report notes that one way to measure current employment demand is to attract job postings.

During the past year in the St. Louis region, there were nearly 22,000 job postings for registered nurses, almost 11,000 for retail sales persons and coming in third was just over 10,000 open jobs for a heavy and tractor trailer truck drivers.

There have been a lot of headlines about supply chain issues, and there are many, many factors affecting this, but one significant cause that can't be overlooked is that shortage of truck drivers.

According to the American Trucking Association, trucking is what makes our economy go round bringing in nearly $800 billion to the US economy in 2019.

Now those are pre COVID numbers, but the good news is, there has been a post pandemic economic boom, the bad news, just like every other industry, the hiring shortage is hitting the trucking industry hard, which trickles down to the companies they deliver to.

- Without truck drivers, our economy literally stops.

I mean, everything you see around us brought here by a truck.

Sure, things can go on a boat, a plane, even on a train, but at some point everything has to be on a truck.

- [Anne-Marie] So while an increase in demand is something to celebrate, the lack of truckers has exacerbated the supply chain crisis, leaving warehouses full of undeliverable products.

The industry struggle to retain drivers isn't new, but the COVID-19 pandemic amplified the issue.

A report released last month by the American Trucking Association, estimated that the industry is short 80,000 drivers, and all time high.

However, they're estimating that number could double to 160,000 by 2030 as more truckers retire.

- It's not an easy job.

It's not for everyone.

- [Anne-Marie] But there are efforts to narrow the shortage.

Rene Dulle is the senior program manager at the Workforce Solutions Group at St. Louis Community College.

- We work very tightly with industry to determine where there's gaps, where there's skills gaps.

Through St. Louis Community College, we offer several accelerated job training programs.

By accelerated I mean, you're not going to school for two, three years.

You're going to school maybe for five weeks or eight weeks, maybe 12 at the most.

And at the end of those programs, you're going to acquire a certificate or some sort of credential that's recognized by an industry.

And usually it's a pipeline straight to a job.

- [Anne-Marie] The college offer a commercial driver's license or CDL truck driver training program, where upon completion, students will have the skills and certification needed to become an entry-level over the road or local truck driver.

- The CDL program is one of our most popular programs in the Workforce Solutions Group.

- [Anne-Marie] What do they have to know about this thing?

- Everything.

- [Anne-Marie] This is a beast, right?

- This is a 53 foot trailer.

It's the industry standard size trailer.

Along with our truck-- - [Anne-Marie] Matthew Albrecht is the lead CDL program instructor.

He's a retired over the road truck driver, also known as long haul truckers.

- So, this is the inside of my office.

We upshift, we downshift.

- [Anne-Marie] Those who specialize in hauling freight long distances, as opposed to regional or local routes.

- Now, we start with simple basics of backing with the trailer.

We have a coned area here, it's a little bumpy.

- [Anne-Marie] Oh wow, we're gonna squeeze in here, aren't we?

- We're gonna squeeze in here.

- [Anne-Marie] Students seek their commercial driver's license for many reasons.

Some are career changers.

- I was once an employee for Norfolk Southern Railroad.

I took an early retirement from that and I just decided I want to do something else.

So I went from working on the railroad to operating big rigs.

- [Anne-Marie] Others are looking for a career pathway.

- Not everybody needs to go to college to make a good wage, and we can help them see what these pathways are and also help these companies fill those positions.

- [Anne-Marie] Right, so the up-skilling and re-skilling of people.

- Absolutely.

Upskilling and reskilling.

- [Anne-Marie] This course offers two types of commercial driver's licenses.

A class B license is for someone who may be looking to work locally, driving vehicles not quite as large as an 18 wheeler, such as a box truck, large passenger buses, cement mixers, or garbage trucks.

A class A license permits a driver to drive class B vehicles as well as tractor trailers.

Those big rig 18 wheelers.

In Missouri, the minimum age to earn a CDL is 18, but there is a law that prohibits drivers from under 21 from crossing state lines.

- So, if you have a class A CDL and you are between the ages of 18 and 21, you would not be able to drive to Illinois for example, in your truck.

- [Anne-Marie] But there are plenty of local and regional commercial driving employment opportunities for those 18 to 21.

This CDL course at Forest Park is a five week program.

Monday through Friday, 7:30 AM to 3:30 PM.

- [Rene] We have a large parking lot that's dedicated to our program on campus.

We have manual transmission trucks.

- So, the things we teach them first is just to drive around in the truck, how to shift in the truck, and when they're really comfortable with that, then we'll put the trailer on the back and see how good they deal with that.

- We will be teaching them on the largest trucks, largest trailers, most difficult transmission available, meaning they can do anything they want once they leave this program.

- [Anne-Marie] Can anyone do this if they get the training?

- Yeah.

Yes they can.

- [Anne-Marie] Long haul truckers typically are men.

Recent data shows women only make up about 10% of all truck drivers in the United States.

- I'm Leslie, and I am a professional class A commercial driver for Werner Enterprises currently.

- [Anne-Marie] Leslie has been driving 18 wheelers since last year when she earned her CDL license at Forest Park Community College.

Her reasons were simple.

She needed a pathway to a stable career and truck driving offered it.

- Since graduating in 2009, with a degree in anthropology from St. Louis University, I couldn't really do much with that degree and then needing to find a job that wasn't like going back to another four years of school or graduate school for the price.

So I found truck driving and I heard there was a huge amount of openings.

So I signed up for a class pretty quickly within 2020, when everything shut down and I couldn't do Uber anymore.

- [Anne-Marie] And while women like Leslie are not the norm, earning a CDL and becoming an over the road trucker is a career pathway that's breaking stereotypes.

- Actually the person that I share my truck with is also a woman driver.

She's been at it for three years and she's actually younger than me.

- [Anne-Marie] That's all the time we have tonight.

If you wanna learn more about Nine PBS's Pathways to Work initiative or download the 2021 State of the St. Louis Workforce report, visit NinePBS.org/PathwaysToWork.

For Living St. Louis, I'm Anne-Marie Berger.

- [Ruth] Living St. Louis is made possible by the support Betsy & Thomas Patterson Foundation, the Mary Ranken Jordan and Ettie A. Jordan Charitable Trust and by the members of Nine PBS.

(jaunty music) - [Announcer] The following presentation was made possible by Bank of America.