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A Changing Workforce Could Signal Trouble for Berks County, Pa.

Retirement and a lack of skilled replacement talent has industry and government scrambling to correct a worsening situation.

(TNS) — The water has retreated from the beach, alarm sirens are sounding and soon, some believe, a giant wave will come crashing down on Berks County, Pa.

The mass retirements of baby boomers, coupled with a shortage of skilled laborers to replace them - a phenomenon some have referred to as the "silver tsunami" - is nearing crisis levels, according to several local workforce experts. And, they said, if something is not done, it could force companies to reject orders or, in a worst-case scenario, relocate.

"It really has become the defining economic development issue for Berks County moving forward," said Randy Peers, president and CEO of the Greater Reading Chamber Alliance.

According to information provided by the Berks County Workforce Development Board, beginning in 2011 the gap between potential entrants into the local labor market and likely retirees exiting employment began to grow significantly. Between 2011 and 2025, the potential retiree population, those ages 65-plus, is projected to grow about 45 percent, from approximately 60,000 to more than 88,000, or from approximately 1 out of 7 Berks County residents to nearly 1 out of 5.

Over the same time, the population of potential entrants into the labor force, those ages 25 to 29, is projected to remain essentially flat at just over 25,000.

The workforce development board projects that in Berks County's top economic sector of manufacturing, local companies will need to recruit and retain around 7,000 new entrants by 2025 just to replace retiring baby boomers. Meanwhile, some local manufacturers already are reporting having to turn down customer orders because they lack the skilled workers needed to fulfill them, said Dan Fogarty, director of workforce development and chief operating officer at the workforce development board.

"Employers will really be strapped," said Fogarty, who says the so-called silver tsunami is the board's No. 1 area of focus. "We've heard from some small employers that they could take on more business given their plant and equipment, but they don't have the skilled employees to do that."

Lost opportunities

While it hasn't been affected by mass retirements as of yet, Custom Processing Services Inc., Exeter Township, which reduces larger particles into ultra-fine and nano-sized particles for chemicals, pharmaceuticals and other industries. is definitely having issues finding skilled workers to supplement the company's growth, said Scott Lehr, in-house consulting director. Lehr said there's been a shortage of workers for about five years, but it has gotten worse in the last year or two.

"What's been the pattern the past few years is, there's opportunities we're not pursuing simply because we can't find the skilled work set," he said.

Between not being able to find enough workers and attendance issues among the workers the company does find, workforce is a huge issue for Custom Processing, Lehr said. He estimated that the company is constantly trying to hire workers to fill about 15 percent of its total population.

Custom Processing has introduced initiatives on both the recruiting and retention fronts to try to mitigate the problem, Lehr said. First, he said, the company has changed its hiring practices to a more attribute-based system, as opposed to a skill-based system.

"We're looking at, is there a fire in the belly, does the individual we're talking to want a career, want to learn?" he said. "In the past, we would have looked for a specific skill, such as manufacturing skills. Now we're saying, we will train you in manufacturing if you have the desire to come to work and have a career."

EnerSys, the Bern Township battery-maker, had to look outside of Berks to fill positions at its newly created engineering and research facility, said Joern Tinnemeyer, senior vice president and chief technology officer.

"We couldn't get people from this area," he said. "The talent level wasn't sufficient in the Reading and Berks County area."

Now, Tinnemeyer said, the company is having difficulty retaining those workers. Once the "honeymoon period" is over, he said, it's becoming difficult to retain employees who have marketable skill sets.

"You need to create a workplace where the individual who comes here feels that their skills are getting improved, their learning set is being improved, they're moving toward something they believe is beneficial for society; it's not just a paycheck for itself," he said.

Tinnemeyer said the new engineering and research facility, which is known as the EnerSys Global Technology Center and will be in the neighboring Teleflex Inc. facility once that company vacates it, will have a more modern appearance with open workspaces and collaboration rooms akin to something one might find in Silicon Valley.

New sources of labor

In an attempt to solve the crisis, the chamber, the workforce development board and other interested parties have developed a three-pronged approach to the issue. The first strategy, workforce development, is a short-term strategy that involves finding underemployed and unemployed populations, such as recently incarcerated people, disconnected youth and people with language barriers, and helping them acquire additional training that gets them into the workforce as soon as possible.

"When unemployment is at historic lows, you start to then say, what's the next layer of potential employee that we can tap into?" Peers said. "So now companies are broadening their thinking in terms of tapping into new sources of labor, so they're looking at special populations. They're looking at, for example, formerly incarcerated men and women who are coming out of prison."

Another big group, Peers said, is disconnected youth: young adults ages 17 to 24 who are not working and not in school. He said the workforce development board released a study in 2017 that concluded there's between 5,000 and 7,000 disconnected youths here in Berks County, the vast majority of whom didn't complete high school.

"They do have a subset that completed high school and just didn't know what to do next," he said. "College wasn't for them. To re-engage them, you got to help them get their GED and you've got to give them some skills training."

Ellen Albright, the chamber's director of workforce and education - a position that was created, in part, to address the silver tsunami - said another group of people employers are increasingly looking at is those who speak a language other than English. She said the chamber recently received a state grant to help non-English speakers develop proficiency in the language in order to be able to work certain jobs.

"That program is comprehensive in the sense that while it does provide soft skills training, some technical skills training, the big area of focus for this program is English as a second language," she said. "That

really helps them complement the other training that they're getting."

Several employers have agreed to guarantee an interview for students who complete the language training, Albright said.

Changing a mindset

The second strategy is longer term and involves changing the mindset that all high school students should attend four-year colleges. For many years, high school students were told that getting a traditional college education is the most important goal, and those who didn't often were looked down upon.

With many well-paying jobs available that don't require a college degree, along with the high cost of college, that's not necessarily the case anymore.

"We're trying to highlight a lot of the different opportunities and different means to an end," said Dan Richards, director professional development and curriculum at the Berks County Intermediate Unit. "One of our things is to partner and collaborate with the local businesses, so we're finding out that they're willing to take on new employees at entry level but help them move up the career ladder within the company by getting their education while they're still working with them."

Richards said the BCIU is not necessarily encouraging students to enter the workforce right out of high school rather than attending a four-year college. Recent graduates don't have to pick one or the other, he said.

"You can do both, or you can be going to a trade school or a CTC or a community college to get that start and coming to them to get that on-the-job training plus additional college or higher education," he said.

Peers lauded the BCIU's program, which, he said seeks to change the mindsets of both students and their parents.

"This model is really innovative, in part, because it's K through 12," he said. "It starts in elementary school, exposing kids to career options in a whole range of different industries. It also layers in some things that we just don't teach in school anymore, like financial literacy and critical thinking skills."

Attract and retain talent

While workforce development and changing the college mindset are important, the most important strategy, Peers said, is attracting and retaining talent in Berks. It involves a variety of factors, including housing, quality of life, cost of living and quality of schools, he said.

"One of the things that we're going to have to talk seriously about is our housing stock and our housing policies in Berks County," he said. "Our new housing starts, while they were up this year significantly, they still don't compare to Lehigh, Montgomery and Chester counties or Lancaster. We have to build more housing, and we have to build the type of housing that our future workforce wants."

Peers noted that when he moved to Berks County about two years ago, it was difficult to find a house because the housing stock was so limited.

"I would see some things during the week, and by the time my wife came here to see it, it would be off the market," he said. "That's an inventory issue. So how do we get to the point where we're building new housing and we're building the type of housing that's going to be attractive to both young people as well as skilled professionals?"

Other factors that make Berks attractive to workers, Peers said, include an unemployment rate at pre-recession levels and a diverse economy that has six of 12 major industries contributing at least 10 percent to the county GDP.

"If you think about it, you can have your whole career here in Berks County," he said. "So in that sense we have an advantage, and we have to maximize that advantage. That ultimately becomes our most important strategy. If we're growing our strategy, if people want to live here, if people want to relocate here, if people want to stay here after they graduate college, that's what it's about, but it's going to require a lot of different strategies."

Small wins

While there is still a ways to go to solve the problem, officials are seeing some progress. Richards said he is seeing a lot of progress in shifting the thinking that every student should attend a four-year college.

"We need to make sure that the students, the parents and the community are aware there are opportunities that you can make a good living at and advance yourself in the near future without creating high student loan debt," he said.

Albright said she has seen a lot of small wins, and that's good because it means people are realizing this is a serious issue, and they're learning what resources are available to them.

"I think we're putting the right things in motion, and I think all the partners in the community have really come together at a crucial point and are talking and making things happen," she said. "We're no longer looking at this as a problem that's on the horizon. We're dealing with the problem that's at hand. We've had some small wins that are going to lead to a big impact."

©2018 the Reading Eagle (Reading, Pa.) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.