CLEVELAND -- When Gov. Mike DeWine asked me to chair the JobsOhio board of directors this year, I knew I had a responsibility to work for job creation and employment opportunity throughout Ohio. Yet I suspect at least one of the reasons the governor approached me is that Northeast Ohio constitutes 40 percent of the state’s economic impact. In other words, we can’t have a prosperous Ohio without a prosperous Cleveland, Akron and Youngstown metropolitan areas.
As chair of our state’s uniquely effective nonprofit economic development corporation, I’ve had the chance to witness the exciting innovation taking place around the state and the high quality of life in all of Ohio’s distinctive communities. There is no shortage of energy, ideas and opportunity in the Buckeye State.
But, having lived in Northeast Ohio for 32 years, I take our talent challenges personally. The entire country, and, yes, all of Ohio is facing a workforce problem. But we’re experiencing it more acutely in our 18-county region.
Bob Smith is board chairman of JobsOhio.
According to a report commissioned and updated annually by Team NEO – JobsOhio’s Northeast Ohio regional economic development partner – we are having a harder time keeping and training our talent in this part of the state.
Team NEO has set a worthy goal that 65 percent of our residents hold a postsecondary degree by 2025, but today that objective is a long way off. Only 34 percent of Northeast Ohio’s population has earned a postsecondary credential, which is one percentage point lower than the state as a whole and four percentage points lower than the nation.
Some people call this a “talent gap,” but I’ve lived here long enough to know that we have the talent. We just need the credentials.
For one thing, we aren’t graduating enough of our students. According to Team NEO’s report, “Aligning Opportunities in Northeast Ohio,” our population of 4.3 million should yield 37,600 graduates with bachelor’s degrees or higher per year. Instead we’re producing only 31,300 annually. That’s 20 percent lower per-capita than the national average.
The effect of this trend is that we don’t have enough skilled workers qualified to fill the jobs that are available – and growing – in our region.
For example, it might not surprise you to know that tech jobs are in demand in Northeast Ohio. In 2018, according to the Team NEO report, there was a total demand of 12,661 computer and IT workers. But the previous year, only 2,216 computer and IT credentials were awarded. That gap is mirrored in other fields, including health care, manufacturing, engineering and finance.
So are there any rays of hope? This is Believeland – so, of course, there are.
Northeast Ohio retains less than half of our graduates with bachelor’s or higher degrees. That doesn’t sound great, but at 47 percent, we’re better off than a lot of elite cities around the country, including Boston; Austin, Texas; and even Columbus and Cincinnati.
Because Northeast Ohio is such a great place to live and work, more of our graduates want to stay. So just think – if we could even maintain that 47 percent retention rate, but graduate our fair share of residents, our talent pool would be in much better shape.
How do we get there?
We must leverage our education assets, which should not be difficult to do in Northeast Ohio, where education is a clear priority. The new Say Yes to Education program to fund college scholarships for Cleveland school district graduates recently announced it has raised $92 million, including $40 million from the Cleveland Foundation – the largest in the Cleveland Foundation’s history.
Two-year college degrees are abundantly available in Northeast Ohio through top-tier institutions such as Cuyahoga Community College. The region also offers coding boot camp certificate programs such as We Can Code IT and Tech Elevator, which help to train residents for the region’s significant in-demand tech talent jobs. Kent State University has increased its number of computer science graduates, but is the only higher education institution in Ohio to do so. Our other colleges and universities want more connectivity with the business community, but aren’t sure how to achieve it.
Team NEO recently created the Talent Development Council to address these and other workforce issues. Through this and other efforts, we can help young people get the credentials they need to fill today’s jobs; we can encourage upward mobility for underemployed populations so that they can earn sustainable wages; and we can create partnerships between businesses, universities and neighborhoods to make our workforce the envy of the nation.
I applaud Team NEO and the entire team at JobsOhio, led by its president and chief investment officer J.P. Nauseef, for their focus on this issue – and I am confident we can produce the credentials to match our talent.
Bob Smith is partner and Cleveland market leader at Cerity Partners LLC and board chairman of JobsOhio.
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