Preparing the MSP Regional Workforce for Recovery
This week Peter talked with Ginny Arthur, President of Metropolitan State University. President Arthur shared some interesting facts about Metro State, including that the average age of students is 31, over half of students are Black, Indigenous or People of Color, and Metro State has more veterans and active military than any other college in the state system. These facts make it clear that Metro State is a critical asset in the Minneapolis Saint Paul region, educating a pool of students that have nontraditional pathways to education and those that have historically faced the greatest barriers to attaining higher education. For these reasons, Metro State University will play a critical role in rebuilding a workforce that has been significantly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, providing reskilling for adult learners and fueling the new pipeline of talent that will fill the roles that are highest in demand by regional employers. This week we take a look at some of the data, trends, and outlook for high demand jobs that will be critical to regional economic recovery.
The Reskilling Imperative
Many jobs have returned to the MSP regional economy since the initial abrupt decline in employment in April 2020, but as of October there are still nearly 130,000 fewer jobs than one year ago. The highest concentration of job losses was in the leisure and hospitality industry sector, especially food services. It is expected that many of these jobs simply won’t return. Finding a path into higher education for adults displaced from these kinds of jobs is foundational to our regional recovery. Metro State, and all colleges and universities in the region, has a role to play in providing this critical reskilling.
Reskilling is necessary across industries, skill-level, and education attainment level in the MSP region. A McKinsey report published in May 2020 foresaw the imperative for companies to begin reskilling their workforces if they wanted to emerge from the crisis in a competitive position. Workers were finding that they had to adapt quickly to changing conditions, and companies realized that the new business model emerging in the post-pandemic era would require a new set of skills, including adaptability and resiliency. Similarly, Deloitte reports that we will see the digital transformation that took place in 2020 continue. Investments in AI, analytics, automation, and digitization will expand and the demand for talent with skills to build AI solutions will grow.
Degrees in Demand
President Arthur shared with Peter that the programs with the highest demand at Metro State University include healthcare, information technology and cybersecurity, sciences, and social work and human services. To serve growing demand, Metro State offers bachelors, masters, and doctoral programs in nursing and is expanding the nursing doctoral program. The university expects to see continued growth in data analytics, environmental sciences, and outdoor recreation management, too. Skills that continue to be in high demand by employers in the region consistently include problem solving skills, working in diverse groups, communication skills, and resiliency.
RealTime Talent, an employer-led public-private collaborative focused on aligning Minnesota’s workforce, analyzed talent demand in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic for the 7-county MSP region. Their analysis found that the MSP region’s most in-demand occupations of the future require a 2-year degree or higher, offer high average wages, and will likely experience talent shortages by 2025 due to low qualified talent pool located within the region.
The top three positions advertised from March to August 2020 by volume were for Software Developers (Applications), Heavy Truck Drivers, Laborers and Freight Movers, and Registered Nurses. Personal Care Aide job posting volumes doubled between 2020 and 2019. This reflects the sudden and growing local demand for entry-level healthcare and human services talent, particularly those with at least a 2-year degree in a related area of study.
Among those occupations that support a living wage, Registered Nurses and Software Developers are expected to add the most jobs over the next ten years in the MSP Metro. Health Science Technology is the field with some of the largest talent shortages in the MSP Metro, including Registered Nurses being the number one occupation of shortage in the region by 2025.
Cybersecurity Outlook
Back in 2018, before COVID-19 flipped the economy upside down, the New York Times reported a stunning statistic, predicting an estimated 3.5 million cybersecurity jobs will be available but unfilled by 2021. The realization in 2018 was that the pace of movement towards the Internet of Things – moving so many aspects of our daily lives online – was creating a massive new threat to personal and national security that we weren’t prepared for. Fast forward to December 2020 and we have even more security threats to consider as so much of our workforce has moved to remote working environments.
The demand for talent with skills in cybersecurity are rising across the country and talent gaps are emerging nearly everywhere. Closing these gaps requires detailed knowledge of the cybersecurity workforce and can now be tracked at CyberSeek, a collaboration between BurningGlass, CompTIA and the National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education (NICE). According to CyberSeek, the Minneapolis Saint Paul region has 14,031 workers employed in cybersecurity. This number ranks us 8th in our peer set. CyberSeek also tracks the number of job openings in cybersecurity There were 7,526 job postings in the MSP region during this time period, the 8th most against the peer set. The supply/demand ratio in MSP is 1.9, meaning for every cybersecurity job opening there are nearly two cybersecurity workers. This ratio is consistently tight across many peer metros and the nation overall.
Source: CyberSeek
Cybersecurity jobs will continue to be in high demand and provide a promising opportunity for reskilling of workers in the MSP region. The region is poised to reskill workers for cybersecurity job opportunities thanks to the MN Cyber Institute, a statewide initiative to position Minnesota as a national leader in cybersecurity, and the degree programs at Metro State University. Metro State offers Bachelor’s degrees in cybersecurity and a newly launched Master’s degree in Cyber Operations. Metro State is designated as a National Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Defense Education by the National Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security. To learn more about cybersecurity programs at Metro State visit here.