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Lack of
skilled workers will lead to fiscal crisis, experts say
Demographers, economists and employers are
advocating more investment in training and
education for the immigrants needed to replace the huge
outgoing crop of baby boomers.
With baby boomers preparing to retire as the best educated
and most skilled workforce in U.S. history, a growing chorus of demographers
and labor experts is raising concerns that workers in California and
the nation lack the critical skills needed to replace them.
In particular, experts say, the immigrant workers needed to fill many
of the boomer jobs lack the English-language skills and basic educational
levels to do so. Many immigrants are ill-equipped to fill California's
fastest-growing positions, including computer software engineers, registered
nurses and customer service representatives, a new study by the Washington-based Migration
Policy Institute found.
Immigrants -- legal and illegal -- already constitute almost half of
the workers in Los Angeles County and are expected to account for nearly
all of the growth in the nation's working-age population by 2025 because
native-born Americans are having fewer children. But the study, based
largely on U.S. Census data, noted that 60% of the county's immigrant
workers struggle with English and one-third lack high school diplomas.
The looming mismatch in the skills employers need and those workers offer
could jeopardize the future economic vitality of California and the nation,
experts say. Los Angeles County, the largest immigrant metropolis with
about 3.5 million foreign-born residents, is at the forefront of this
demographic trend.
"The question is, are we going to be a 21st century city with shared prosperity,
or a Third World city with an elite group on top and the majority at poverty
or near poverty wages?" asked Ernesto Cortes Jr., Southwest regional director
of the Industrial Areas Foundation, a leadership development organization. "Right
now we're headed toward becoming a Third World city. But we can change that."
How to respond to the inexorable demographic trends is a question sparking
a flurry of studies, conferences and new programs. This week, a USC conference
featuring Cortes, former federal housing secretary Henry Cisneros and
other community leaders will explore ways to help immigrants better integrate
into career-oriented jobs and civic life.
The Los Angeles Community College District has launched a workforce development
committee of city officials and community leaders to figure out how to
better prepare students for skills needed in the region.
Last week, more than 500 people gathered at Crenshaw High School at a
conference sponsored by One LA-IAF, a network of more than 100 churches,
unions and community groups. The network has launched a collaboration
with community colleges and employers to recruit low-wage workers, many
of them immigrants, and train them for jobs as nursing assistants and
solar-panel installers.
"Our vision is to create a seamless program that takes undereducated,
underemployed and underskilled workers and puts them into education and job
training that will connect them to career ladders that pay well and offer benefits," said
Yvonne Mariajimenez, a One LA leader. "It's really rebuilding the middle
class."
One of the current trainees is Wendy Estrada, a 30-year-old Honduras
native and naturalized U.S. citizen who aspires to move from her current
work as a house cleaner to a certified nursing assistant and ultimately
to work as a licensed vocational nurse.
Estrada first learned about the program at her parish, St. Thomas the
Apostle Catholic Church in Los Angeles. One LA organizers came to recruit
members for the pilot program, funded by the state community college
system, offering free classes to upgrade English and math skills to levels
required for a certified nursing assistant course.
Estrada used to dream of becoming a doctor in Honduras before marriage,
motherhood and work struggles in Los Angeles waylaid those plans. She
learned English soon after legally arriving in Los Angeles to join her
mother in 1998, so determined to master the language that she went to
classes morning and night, five hours a day, for a year.
When the recruiters came to her parish, Estrada immediately applied.
"I loved the slogan, 'Building a bridge to a new and brighter future,' " she
said. "I knew that education can improve your life, but it was like I
fell asleep having to work, pay the rent and just survive. This program has
reawakened my dreams."
For four months, she received training at Los Angeles Valley College
in basic math and English skills geared toward healthcare work -- calculating
a baby's head measurement, for instance -- along with skills in time
management, meeting goals, interviewing and job hunting.
In February, Estrada began her certified nursing assistant course, where
she has gained both practical skills and academic knowledge. On a recent
afternoon, she huddled over another student posing as a patient while
trying to figure out which way to turn him to remove a protective bed
pad. Instructor Dory Higgins strode over, took a quick glance and showed
Estrada the right technique.
"You change the soiled pad immediately, before you do anything else, because
of skin damage," Higgins said as students took notes.
The growing import of immigrant workers is reflected in Higgins' class.
Among 21 students in class that day, 17 were immigrants from a range
of countries: Mexico, India, Guatemala, Egypt, Honduras, Indonesia, Cuba,
Congo, Ukraine and the tiny West African nation of Burkina Faso.
One of them was Maria Reyes, 30, a Guatemala native who signed up for
the program through her church. Reyes, who came to Los Angeles at age
5, graduated from high school and got pregnant at 18; she began working
as a waitress to bring in money for her new family. Her minimum-wage
job, however, was leading nowhere.
"I wanted to keep doing something better," Reyes said. "This
way I'm helping my family and other people with needs too."
The class practices with mentors at the Center at Park West nursing home
in Reseda. On a recent Sunday, Estrada showed up at 7 a.m. to make the
rounds with Beatrice Bustamante, a veteran nursing assistant from Colombia.
The pair chatted and joked with the elderly residents as they helped
them with massages and shaves, bathing and denture care.
The job isn't easy. On her first day, Estrada cried at the shock of seeing
residents coughing up their food, suffering loneliness and isolation.
But she said she loved helping the residents -- and they seemed to enjoy
her as well.
"They're the best," said Edna Berry, an octogenarian who is bedridden
with a gangrenous leg. "These people are as much family to me as my own
family."
Park West administrator Carrie Marks estimated that 90% of her 110 staff
positions are filled by immigrants, who she said make up the "vast
majority" of job applicants.
"It's in the self-interest of the older generation to have immigrants
here," said Dowell Myers, a USC urban planning and demography professor
and author of the 2007 book "Immigrants and Boomers: Forging a New Social
Contract for the Future of America."
"Even if you don't like it, you have to ask the question: Who's going
to fill your jobs, buy your homes and pay the taxes for old-age support programs?" Myers
said.
Nearly one-third of all Americans -- 76 million people -- were born between
1946 and 1964. Boomer retirements are projected to open up nearly 1 million
jobs in Los Angeles County and 3 million in California in the next decade.
The ratio of seniors to workers is expected to double in the next 20
years in Los Angeles -- a more rapid pace than is expected for the state
or nation, Myers said.
The new Migration Policy Institute report, however, noted promising opportunities
in Los Angeles for better integrating immigrants into mainstream economic
and civic life. The region has a more settled immigrant population; new
immigration to Los Angeles is at its lowest level in more than 30 years.
An expanding and more culturally integrated population of immigrants'
children and increasing naturalization rates among immigrants could also
help ease the transition, said Michael Fix, vice president of the institute
and co-author of the study.
"L.A. is probably better equipped than in the past to deal with this,
but still faces pretty big obstacles," Fix said.
The challenge of filling boomer jobs has prompted several firms and public
agencies to start their own training programs. The Los Angeles Department
of Water and Power projects that one-third of its 8,300 workers will
be eligible for retirement in the next five years. It is teaming up with
unions to recruit new apprentices for such jobs as electrical distribution
mechanics and help them learn the trade. Entry-level meter readers earn
about $12 an hour, but electrical distribution mechanics can earn $48,000
a year with health benefits.
Susana Reyes, who works with the joint training institute run by the
utility and electrical workers union, said she did not know how many
new recruits were immigrants, but that a recent class included 40% Latinos
and 40% African Americans.
"We are anxious to make sure a pipeline of workers is out there and of
the quality we need," she said.
Ultimately, experts say, greater investments in public education, a renewed
focus on vocational education and better job training are critical to
California's continued prosperity. Stephen Levy of the Center for the
Continuing Study of the California Economy said the foundation for the
state's robust economy was laid by farsighted politicians and voters
from both parties. They supported the GI Bill, Pell grants and the vast
expansion of the state university system, Levy said, producing the best
educated workforce in U.S. and California history.
The investments more than paid off: Every dollar invested in public education
produces $8 in added tax revenues, according to Myers. He and others
worry that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposed cuts in the education
budget could cripple efforts to produce the well-educated and skilled
workers California urgently needs.
Even some groups that advocate a reduction in legal immigration as a
way to preserve U.S. jobs agree with the idea of better training for
the existing workforce.
"Absolutely we would favor educating and training the labor force of legal
immigrants over bringing in more foreign workers," said Roy Beck, president
of the Virginia-based NumbersUSA.
"Let's invest in people we have here."
Source: Los Angeles Times
April 21, 2008
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