Employers are adding jobs.

Nationally, employers added more than 650,000 jobs in February; however, finding employees to fill the positions has proven difficult for some industries.

That discussion is this week on Nevada Week.

♪♪♪ Support for Nevada Week is provided by Senator William H. Hernstadt and additional supporting sponsors.

Welcome to Nevada Week; I'm Amber Renee Dixon.

In Nevada 3,700 jobs were added in December, and in January the unemployment rate was 5.2%, down five percentage points from January 2021.

While the new numbers are good, several industries around Southern Nevada are still struggling with staffing shortages.

We'll look at what the Clark County School District is doing in a moment, but first we start with Bob Daniel, owner of PrideStaff Las Vegas, an employment agency serving the Clark County area.

Bob, thank you for coming in.

You have 10-plus experience in this area-- 10-plus years experience in this area, serving clients like MGM Resorts International, Southwest Gas and City of North Las Vegas.

With all that in mind, all that you've seen, what is it like currently with staffing shortages in Southern Nevada?

(Bob Daniel) Yes, it's really-- first of all, thanks for having me-- it's really a struggle.

It's an extremely competitive and difficult recruiting environment for a number of reasons, including obviously the one that people think about the most is employees want a lot more money.

As an example a year and a half ago, you could get a warehouse worker for $12 an hour, right?

Right now if you're not offering at least $15, their whole view is yes, well, I kind of think I'll go somewhere else, and we're seeing similar things in the area of administration, accounting and finance.

It's just a demand for more money in terms of one of the items that people are looking for.

-What are some of the other reasons behind this shortage, and does it all seem to stem back to the pandemic?

People were laid off, and they're just not returning to work since?

-I think the pandemic plays a pretty large part in it.

It's given people an opportunity to kind of rethink their job.

You know, we had the introduction of work from home, and a lot of companies had the view of well, we're never going to do that and now we literally have quote, unquote, candidates for jobs saying well, I really want a job that enables me to work from home, or I want to work from home for two or three days a week.

So it's not just pay, it is kind of the type of work that they're being asked to do.

Working from home, it's also I'm not really sure this is the job I want to go back to, right?

So we're seeing people kind of walk away and transition to new careers as well.

-And are people also pursuing their own businesses, deciding to use their skill set and start something on their own and give up what an employer would offer as far as benefits, et cetera?

-Yes, we are seeing some individuals do that.

We've interviewed-- I've interviewed a couple of people just this week and when looking at their resumes, I see there's a little bit of a gap and I ask the question, what happened there?

Well, I was running my own business.

So what happened when you were running your own business?

Well, the pandemic came, I didn't have enough money, I didn't think it was going to be as difficult as it is.

But we are seeing some of that continue right now.

-What about the skill set?

Are the employees, potential employees you're hearing from, do they have the skills that the employers are looking for?

-Not really.

I think what's going on is employers have a view of I want someone with the following experiences and skills.

Individuals are applying for those, and they really don't match.

They don't tie together.

For example you could be looking for a machinist or a manufacturing associate, yet when you look at their resume, maybe they spent a lot of time working in a warehouse environment in what we call the "pick and pack area."

Well, they will apply for that job because they think it's similar, and it's not.

So what an employer would do, an employer would go no, that's not really what I'm looking for.

I'm looking for someone with this specific set of skills, and those skills are very difficult to find.

-Is there also a mindset difference between what employers are asking you to find and what employees say they're looking for in terms of commitment?

-Yes.

Companies today want individuals, at least in my experience, want individuals that want to grow with them, and in today's environment most quote, unquote, employees are really looking for I just want a job that enables me to pay my bills.

I'm not sure I want to stay with this company for two years, three years or five years.

Just get me into a job that enables me to pay my bills and meet my monthly expenses.

-So they're starting to think more about a work-life balance perhaps.

-Yes.

-And there was a report by the firm Workhuman showing that 50% of people who started a new job during the pandemic plan on looking for a new job in the next year.

So there's a lot of shift and not a lot of, I guess, long-term desire to stay in one job.

-Yes.

I think employees get into a job for a variety of reasons, obviously having to take care of family obligations, the money and so on and so forth, but after they're into it, what they find many times is the job doesn't meet their expectations.

So for example, maybe they were working first shift.

Something happens in their family life where oh, I need to change shifts.

Well, maybe the employer isn't open to that.

Or maybe the employer because of the shortage has put more work on their plate, and they go, I'm really working too hard for the money I'm being paid, so I'm going to look somewhere else.

-And talking about family needs, childcare was already an issue that kept people from going into the workforce.

It's too expensive to pay someone to watch your child and go to work.

You're just giving all your money away, it seems like.

Has that changed as a result of the pandemic, the childcare need?

-No.

The childcare need, in addition to taking care of parents and grandparents, is still a concern.

If you're working in an unskilled job as an example, you're bringing home in many cases just enough to take care of your obligations, and by the time you add childcare to it, you're underwater.

And now with gas prices going up, by the time you add gas to it and so on and so forth, now you're really underwater.

So what we're finding is people are just saying well, you know what?

I'm just going to stay home.

I'm just not going to participate in the workforce.

-How busy are you these days, and have you had to adjust how you operate because of needs of businesses trying to get employees back and employees maybe not so willing to take the jobs they once were?

-No, we are extremely busy.

As I said before, recruiting is extremely tight right now, and what we spend our time doing quite honestly is going through all of the resumes, all our clients' requests, trying to match the right individual with that company, so we interview on average about 12 to 15 people a day.

We were doing virtual interviews, now we're back to face-to-face.

So really a lot of it is just the screening and then if they meet our hiring criteria, bringing them into our office, trying to then match them with our client.

So no, we're extremely busy.

-You're extremely busy, and I know you mentioned that the workforce in Las Vegas, it's not just hotel and casino jobs anymore.

What would you say about that?

-I would say that at a point in time, as Las Vegas goes, hospitality and gaming goes or vice versa.

Nowadays with the influx of a lot of warehouses, a lot of other corporations, many of them coming in from California and other places, what we're really finding is a slight shift in terms of hospitality and gaming.

Part of that is also when you look at the pay associated with hospitality and gaming, right, it's really not where the employees want it to be, to be quite candid with you.

I don't know if you saw the news this week, but Target's going up to $24 an hour for some of their workers.

The average warehouse worker right here right now in Las Vegas is at $15 an hour, and a year ago you could get that person for $12 an hour.

-Wow!

Bob Daniel-- if you're looking for a job out there, Bob Daniel at PrideStaff might be the guy to go to.

Thank you so much for coming in.

-Thank you very much for having me.

It's been a pleasure.

-One sector plagued by shortages for several years is education, and the pandemic only made those shortages worse.

According to the Clark County School District website, there are currently 1,400 openings for licensed employees.

Compare that to 850 vacancies in December and 700 at the start of the school year in August.

Joining us to talk about what the school district is doing to try and address those vacancies is Steven Flak, director of recruitment for the school district.

Steven, thank you for coming in.

How difficult is your job right now?

(Steven Flak) It's challenging, it really is, and it's challenging across the board no matter what industry you're in.

But education is especially challenging now.

The pipelines are a bit limited and the availability of teachers and other educational employees, it's been dwindling for years now.

-And to be fair, this is a national shortage but a shortage that CCSD has experienced even prior to the pandemic.

What are you hearing from potential recruits about why they may be hesitant to enter education?

-Well, you know, it depends on what you're talking about when you say "recruits."

You know, the individuals that are coming through college, right, that have gone through education programs, there's not a lot of hesitancy there, right, because they've already committed at least four years towards their education and achieving that license.

When you talk to the pipelines of candidates, say our current high school students that are going through some of our programs, there's hesitancy there.

You know, they address the workload, the treatment of teachers, the classroom environment, but there's still individuals out there that are passionate.

Even the youth as they go through these classes, they're extremely excited and passionate.

And it's more of a calling, right, than it is a job so that's refreshing to hear that out of their mouths, too.

-Because of some of the staffing shortages, there have been reports of two or even three classes having to be combined with just one teacher overseeing them all.

Also, selling prep periods, which I'm not quite sure what that means.

What does that mean?

-Well, every teacher has a prep period, and they're able to take that time to prepare for the other requirements during the day and their other classes and students and things of that nature.

But when they sell their prep periods, they're able to come in and teach another class and fill in that area.

-Are they actually getting paid extra for that?

-Yes.

-Okay.

Well, that is one benefit except in order to prepare for all their other classes, they're going to have to do that in their free time.

Your area of expertise is fixing these problems, and there are a couple of tools that you now have at your disposal.

One is because the state just allowed that school districts with 9,000 students or more are able to have substitute teachers who only have a high school degree.

How much does that help you, and how soon does that go into effect?

-Well, it's currently in effect now, right, so we are able to hire individuals on the emergency substitute license.

It's a special license; it's not your standard license.

If they have a high school diploma, they're able to apply through the Department of Education to receive that emergency substitute license.

With that though comes 8-10 hours of training-- we just don't throw them straight into a classroom-- on classroom management, etiquette, law, all of those, handling special education students.

So we do our best to prepare them, and 8-10 hours is not, you know, an extreme amount of preparation, but we certainly just don't throw them in there.

And on top of that, their training, they have to pass with 85% in order to move forward and be in the classroom.

-And that is only able to happen when the state is under a state of emergency.

So what would you say though to people who claim maybe it sounds more like a babysitter role as opposed to actually advancing education if they only have the high school education?

-Well, for our substitutes there's lesson plans that are already prepared for them when they come into the classroom.

The regular teacher that's in that classroom prepares those lesson plans and leaves lesson plans for them to engage the students with directions on how they engage and how they keep them active, right?

So rather than it just being, you know, study time, or daresay as you said, the babysitter there, you know, they're able to be productive and maintain on course towards achieving their objectives.

-As far as actual teachers, there is an expedited path to becoming a licensed teacher for support staff at CCSD who already have some college credits.

They can get into this program at UNLV that is a one-year accelerated, kind of crash course.

How beneficial will that be to you?

-Well, that's extremely beneficial, and that's one of the ways that we address the challenges of the teacher shortages.

Traditionally, we try and recruit new teachers out of college.

We try and attract teachers that are already in the field from other school districts and other states.

But the reality is right now we're trying to squeeze the same amount of juice or more juice out of the same orange, if you will.

And that Parapro Pathway Project, that's our partnership with UNLV, enables our current employees who already have a passion for education to be able to accelerate their education and get into the classroom in as short as a year at no cost to themselves as well.

And as an employer, it's just best practices to do that, no matter what industry you're in, is to promote your internal employees and enable them to find success.

That's how you get the reputation of an employer of choice.

-You talked about passion to become a teacher in that group.

On the other end of the spectrum, you're allowing anyone with a bachelor's degree, even if it's not in education, to become a teacher.

How is that program working out for you?

-So that's been a program that's existed for quite some time.

We have our ALTA program, our Accelerated Licensure Teaching Academy at CCSD.

We partner with Nevada State College right now with that program, and it's been around for quite a few years.

There's been quite a few other program partners out there that offer those same type of opportunities.

UNLV has an alternate route to licensure program, and I want to say i-teach, Teachers of Tomorrow, there's many different projects out there, programs out there, that will help produce those teachers.

-Steven Flak, thank you so much for coming in.

We know your recruitment job would also be helped by retention, which is a whole other topic we hope to get into.

Getting Southern Nevadans back to work and in jobs that they want may require new job training.

Dedicated to the economic development of Southern Nevada, the Las Vegas Global Economic Alliance is trying to help get the local workforce up to speed for the new types of industries headed to Clark County.

We spoke with the new head of the LVGEA, Tina Quigley, about these efforts.

Staffing shortages in Southern Nevada, from your perspective, how serious are they?

(Tina Quigley) So at this point, I just checked this morning, and we're about 5.9% unemployment.

So still we're not quite recovered, but certainly our numbers are considerably down from the 33% they were during the pandemic, right?

So we are figuring out people have decided to-- some have chosen just to not work.

Maybe they retired early because the value of their house has increased and their portfolio has done well.

It might be likewise that we had a two-income family and they've learned to live on the one income again.

Maybe their housing prices have increased or their portfolios have done well and they figured out how to do it.

Then there are also some who lost their jobs as part of the pandemic and have figured out how to get by without.

Maybe they're doing independent work with Uber or some freelance work, but they are not actively seeking employment.

But one of the things that I'm kind of excited about here in Southern Nevada is that I do believe if we are successful at starting to diversify our economy and bring in employers and jobs that are paying desirable salaries, you know, $70,000 or $90,000, and we're thinking specifically about the advanced manufacturing industry right now because that's a focus of ours, that we might be able-- I think we have the human capital here in Southern Nevada that would be attracted to those jobs and maybe come back into the workforce, which I believe puts us at a competitive advantage against some of our other regions like Phoenix and Salt Lake which are pretty much already saturated, which have sucked up all that talent that they possibly can into those types of jobs which allows us, I think, to start to get a little competitive.

-You brought up Salt Lake City and Phoenix, and I'm wondering how their situation is different than ours.

Is their workforce different than ours in that Southern Nevada has so many employees that fill casino and hotel jobs?

-We definitely have the bodies who are trainable, and although the hotels have started to bring people back or are trying to bring people back and sometimes are having a tough time, we know that workforce exists here in Southern Nevada and again is trainable.

A little bit different education systems here in Southern Nevada versus in Phoenix or in Salt Lake, but that's okay.

I think we each have got our own niches and can attract based on those niches.

We'll attract businesses that are parallel and align with the workforce.

-What are the industries you're working to attract?

-The LVGEA along with the community, our chamber partners, our municipality partners, has identified seven industries, target industries, target markets, that we believe are very appropriate and aligned with the workforce that we have here in Southern Nevada.

One is advanced-- general and advanced manufacturing.

Another is transportation and logistics.

Another is healthcare services, information and communications technologies, creative technologies, and also clean energy, and then business and finance, so financial services.

So there are seven, and those are the appropriate-- those are target markets that will be very appropriate for the workforce we have and the education systems that we have here.

-So how does LVGEA go about training the workforce that is available here?

-So the LVGEA is close partners-- I should go back for a minute and describe what the LVGEA is.

So there are a lot of words there, a lot of letters, right?

Las Vegas Global Economic Alliance is the state-designated regional economic development authority, which means that we are the agency that is the conduit to the state for tax incentives.

Likewise, we receive money from the state to help facilitate, to grow, to work with all of our community partners to attract, retain and grow businesses and employees, because that's what makes a region thrive and healthy is continuing to grow, continuing to increase wages and bring businesses here.

So our role is to support those who are doing the workforce training.

So in particular Workforce Connections is the region's designated workforce development agency, and we work with them.

We also work with several different other training entities and agencies and municipalities who have training centers to bring us together to align to make sure-- our role is to keep them aware of the type of businesses that need training, the types of industries, and then they will craft training programs to align with those industries, because it wouldn't make any sense, right, if we had a workforce development effort that was training for jobs that weren't necessarily coming here.

So working really closely with the types of businesses who need training and the workforce development teams who are doing the training to make sure we're aligned.

-I imagine that coronavirus made it more obvious that Southern Nevada needs to diversify its economy, or was this already on the minds of business leaders prior to the pandemic?

-Well, I think we've been talking about it forever.

I've been here for 32 years, and we've always talked about the fact that we need to diversify the economy, to broaden it beyond just travel and tourism and leisure because travel and tourism can go through boom and bust cycles, right?

It always recovers and we've been very lucky that it's always recovered, but we do go through extreme boom and bust, and that's really hard on families and our economy.

I don't know about you, but I lost several friends during the financial crisis who moved out of the state, and that's a loss for our community, a loss for our kids when people have to leave.

So we've always known that diversifying was important, but sometimes-- it's easy when we're in those super healthy phases.

It's kind of easy to get distracted and not be as focused.

But I think I'm feeling a new-- I don't know about you, but I'm feeling this new energy and understanding that we truly do need to be committed.

Even though we are starting to increase our travel and tourism industry again, even though we're seeing jobs come back and our unemployment is dropping again, I think that business leaders in Southern Nevada recognize that this time we cannot forget, and we truly do need to continue to be focused on diversifying.

-So Southern Nevada is in the running for a Build Back Better Regional Challenge grant, and if awarded it would fund a handful of projects that are meant to promote manufacturing.

Why manufacturing?

Why is that industry important to Southern Nevada?

-So the Build Back Better grant is so important to us for a couple of reasons.

One, it is the very first time that all of these agencies and entities have come together collaboratively to submit to the federal government a regional grant.

So the cities, the county, our partners, the LVGEA, we are all together.

All of our logos are on this grant submitted to the federal government, and the federal government loves to award to regions because they know there's a collaborative effort, a lot of synergy that comes from regions who are working together towards one particular goal, and the goal in this case is to advance manufacturing, and in particular advanced manufacturing, industry growth.

The reason we like that is one, like we've talked about, we believe we've got the workforce that can be trained for these types of jobs.

Our service industry, our travel and leisure industry employees, we know they are skilled and trainable and could easily transfer.

The other thing is these types of jobs are generally well paying, relatively speaking, and you know, the higher the wages you've got in your region, the more economic growth and the healthier you're going to be, your community is going to be.

So we feel like it's an industry that makes a lot of sense for Nevada.

-In past interviews you've talked about the importance of developing the economy from a regional perspective.

What does that entail?

-So certainly having a collaborative group working towards an end is much more effective than having small bubbles working towards an end within their small bubble.

The power of this region as it comes together, if we're very targeted and have one message and focus all of our energies collaboratively towards manufacturing or any of our other target industries, we're going to be much more powerful and much more effective.

Each one of the cities and the county have their own economic development offices also, so they come together to share information about what they're working on, employers that they're talking to and really figuring out where is the right location for each one of these types of businesses.

We have certain niches.

North Las Vegas is a different community than the city of Henderson, which is a different community than unincorporated Clark County, and we know that.

We know kind of what each of the boutique niches are of each of those, and we capitalize on those but always thinking about it as an overall-- not working against each other but recognizing that it's an overall umbrella and each community has kind of got its own piece of the puzzle as we put together this full economic development plan.

-And does education play any part in that regional economic development?

-So a lot of times when we think about education, we're just thinking about K-12 or just higher ed, but really education the entire way is building up towards a workforce, right?

It's baby steps towards a workforce.

So it's workforce development, and in this case Workforce Connections and its partners as well as others are starting early and getting into the classrooms as early as K-12 to start talking about the fact that you don't necessarily have to go to college.

College isn't important for those who have certain careers in mind, but it isn't always the final answer.

There are plenty of careers, plenty of well-paying careers, that we want to bring here to Southern Nevada that don't necessarily require advanced education, maybe associate's degree or maybe vocational college, but getting in and starting to send the message to kids that there's a variety of choices to consider.

-Tina Quigley, thank you for your time.

And thank you as always for joining us this week on Nevada Week.

For any of the resources discussed on this show including information on the workforce training resources available through Vegas PBS as well as information about recruiting at CCSD, please visit our website at vegaspbs.org/nevadaweek.

You can also follow us on Facebook and Twitter at @nevadaweek.