Date: 2010-07-19
Speaker: GEORGE MILLER (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: California

Madam Speaker. I rise today in support of H.R. 1855. the Strengthening Employment Clusters to Organize Regional Success or SECTORS Act. which promotes strategic approaches to addressing skills shortages. Sector strategies is an approach that brings employers in a certain industry together with education. labor. workforce. and other groups to identify and provide training that is tailored to meet the sector needs of that regions economy. The SECTORS Act would support existing industry partnerships or help leverage funding from employers. educators. labor. and the workforce system to adopt a sectorsbased working partnership that comes together to identify economic trends and shared workforce issues and develop the tools required to meet the growing demand in that targeted industry. As some industries maintain signs of recovery. you would expect that employers would have an easy time filling their openings. In manufacturing. the June 2010 ISM Report on Business showed that economic activity in the sector grew for the 11th consecutive month. The manufacturing industry has added 136.000 jobs since December 2009. Yet many American companies. including manufacturers believe they cannot find workers with the qualifications needed for these jobs. A recent New York Times article highlighted a contract drug company in Ohio that needed to hire 100 workers. Despite reviewing 3.600 job applications. the company has only offered jobs to 47 people so far. In a July 2009 survey of employers. the Business Roundtables Springboard Project found that more than 60 percent of those surveyed indicated that they were having difficulty finding qualified applicants to fill current vacancies. and almost half indicated that there was a gap between the skills of their current workforce and company requirements. In a survey of manufacturing organizations conducted by Deloitte. The Manufacturing Institute. and Oracle found that skill shortages persist. especially for the most profitable companies. Almost onethird of responding companies reported some level of shortages today. and over onehalf reported shortages for skilled production workers. With the economy improving. companies are retooling the way they operate in order to remain competitive against their global rivals and in assessing its short and longterm talent needs. businesses are calling for higherskilled worke rs. In the current economy. workers need a wide range of services and support to reenter and succeed in the labor market. Job training is one important part of that solution. particularly for workers who have experienced extended unemployment and need to rebuild their skills. dislocated workers who are moving into new industries as local and regional economies are revamped. or even incumbent workers who need to upgrade their skills as industries adopt new technologies. including green technology. It is critical that we ensure that workers have the right skills for todays labor market and that those skills help them move into jobs and careers. One of the best ways to do this is to ensure that federally funded training is developed in partnership with local and regional employers.