Matchmaking
Florida has lots of non-college-bound students, and employers have plenty of high-paying, skilled-labor jobs for them. The problem is matching employers with potential employees.
 "I needed to do something that was more of a career." — Tillman Lee Nelson III |
Meanwhile, only 16% of this month’s freshman high school class will earn a bachelor’s degree by 2017.
Hmmm. Jobs that don’t require college. People without a college education. It should be a marriage made in the marketplace. But getting employers who offer those high-wage, high-demand jobs together with prospective workers is proving as star-crossed as romance in a Victorian novel, complicated by parental expectations, awkward gaps in educational attainment and missed opportunities aplenty. Says Rodney Miller, head of FPL Group’s Juno Beach-based education and training effort, “There’s a huge shortage of specialized, trained, skilled craft workers.”
As abundant “Now Hiring” signs at fast-food joints testify, finding even unskilled workers is a challenge. (In May, despite the real estate slowdown, the state posted a 3.4% unemployment rate, continuing a trend of being a full percentage point under the national unemployment rate.) But filling jobs that require substantial skills training is even more difficult. Florida’s economy is “going from less skilled to more skilled,” says Curtis Austin, president of Workforce Florida, which directs the state’s workforce programs and services. “The biggest issue is you don’t have enough warm bodies.”
To bridge the gap, Florida increasingly is taking on the role of preparing workers for and matching them with employers of skilled labor. The state is ramping up technical education offerings throughout its education and workforce systems. Seventeen counties across Florida either have or are planning to add a CHOICE program [“Learn, Then Earn,” page 72]. Also expanding are the Employ Florida Banner Center skilled labor training centers that launched in earnest last year. The 10 centers aim to provide more workers for critical state sectors [“Banner Years,” page 79]. Some centers focus on long-established industry needs such as manufacturing while others represent a state economic wish fulfillment plan for jobs Florida wants more than has, such as in biotechnology. There’s even a matchmaking website, employflorida.com. “I think we would be remiss if we didn’t try to get ahead of the curve,” says Andra Cornelius, Workforce Florida’s vice president for business outreach.
 POLE POSITION: A student trains to become an FPL line specialist. Almost half of FPL’s line specialists will be eligible to retire in three years. The company pays apprentice line specialists more than $41,000 a year. [Photo: Daniel Portnoy] |
semester, sleep lab tech program beginning this month at the Banner health sciences training center at Valencia Community College in Orlando. Dew cold-called 30 central Florida sleep disorder centers and found plenty of demand for registered polysomnography technicians, who can make $37,000 to $48,000 per year. Sleep disorder treatment is a growth industry, but there are only 13 accredited training programs nationwide, including one at Tallahassee Community College, for techs. “I was actually getting calls from physicians saying, ‘How can I get involved? I need techs,’ ” Dew says.
The state hopes the centers can duplicate the success of business-education partnerships such as the one Torrance, Calif.-based Toyota Motor Sales has with schools like Atlantic Technical Center, a Broward County public school offering post-secondary and high school education. A June day finds 15 students, in training to become mechanics, in a school garage huddled around a classmate wearing thick white electrical line gloves as he works on the 200-volt power unit of a 2006 Prius.
Out of 100 entering
9th-graders in Florida this fall: |
Students pay $7,000 in tuition and books for the two-year program and after eight weeks begin work at one of 10 Toyota or Lexus area dealerships, generally at $9.50 per hour on the lube rack. Graduates start in the mid-$30,000s but can move up to $60,000 a year and even, for efficient mechanics willing to put in 12-hour days, $100,000 per year. Atlantic Tech provides the teachers and space. Toyota provides $60,000 to $100,000 annually in vehicles. Says the school’s automotive department head, Ken Bergmann, as he shows off the donated vehicles, “I just got a 2007 Camry. This is an ’03 Matrix. I just got a 2006 Matrix.”
Tillman Lee Nelson III, 28, of Margate, entered the program after years working as a auto detailer. “I needed to do something that was more of a career,” says Nelson, who graduated in 2005 and expects to earn more than $40,000 this year as a JM Lexus mechanic, roughly $10,000 more than he made detailing. He can earn $50,000 or more a year when he completes the final two of eight National Institute for Automotive Service Excellence certifications needed to become a master mechanic.
“Toyota figured this out,” says an admiring Miller, the FPL education head. He and FPL are now trying to bring industry and education together on multiple fronts, from high schools to higher education. FPL, which pays starting apprentice line specialists more than $41,000 a year, says that by 2010 an estimated 46% of its line specialists will be eligible for retirement. Meanwhile, Florida’s energy needs are projected to double in coming years; new plants and distribution lines will require skilled labor to build and maintain them. “It’s going to be quite the strain to come up with the workers,” says Kathleen Woodring of the Citrus, Levy, Marion Workforce Board and coordinator of an energy task force representing utility companies and area schools. The state’s Florida Energy Workforce Consortium also is on the case, and a Banner center opened last year at Lake-Sumter Community College.
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Private institutions, such as Keiser University and other for-profits, also provide workforce training, as do many employers in-house and groups such as the Associated Builders and Contractors. Its Fort Lauderdale-based non-profit worker training institute will enroll more than 1,400 trainees this month in HVAC, high-voltage line erection, sheet metal, plumbing, electrical and fire sprinkler-fitter, says Eric Kennedy, vice president for education. “The nice thing about these programs is they affect our economy exponentially,” Kennedy says.
The trick for workforce training programs is reaching qualified students. Many of the best, who would have gravitated to a trade a generation ago, now head for college. The training programs have to convince them to try jobs that require hard labor, often outdoors, working at times at night and weekends and facing physical danger [“High Pay at a Price,” page 78].
Kennedy says 67% of Associated Builders and Contractors institute students are minorities, with the largest numbers Hispanic and Haitian. Most are immigrants. They don’t buy into the “negative cultural stereotype” associated with many of the jobs, Kennedy says.
Florida officials say the state, schools and parents haven’t done enough to focus middle school and high school students on skilled-labor job opportunities. “We have for years as a system and society said, ‘You’ve got to go to college. You’ve got to go to college.’ Not everyone is going to go to a Harvard or Notre Dame or even a Florida State,” says Luci Hadi, workforce education chancellor with the state Department of Education.
In-Demand
Skilled labor jobs in Florida (2005)  [Photo: Eileen Escarda] |
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| Occupation | Vacancies | Average Hourly Pay |
| Registered nurse | 5,969 | $24.95 |
| Licensed practical and licensed vocational nurses | 1,587 | $16.95 |
| Automotive techs and mechanics | 1,103 | $16.45 |
| Electricians | 1,042 | $16.29 |
| HVAC and refrigeration mechanics and installers | 816 | $16.14 |
| Medical and clinical lab techs | 601 | $21.60 |
| Plumbers, pipefitters, steamfitters | 601 | $16.26 |
| Radiologic techs | 502 | $20.22 |
| Source: Florida 2005 Job Vacancy/Hiring Needs Survey by the Agency for Workforce Innovation | ||