We asked our WorkingNation Advisory Board to share their thoughts on the most important issues and challenges facing the workforce and the labor market in the coming year.
Board member Joseph Fuller is a professor of management practice and co-heard of the Managing the Future of Work Project at the Harvard Business School.
Fuller and his colleague Manjari Raman, program director of the project, just released The Partnership Imperative: Community Colleges, Employers, & America’s Chronic Skills Gap, examining the important role that America’s community colleges play in our workforce development.
Here are some excerpts from that report for our The Future of Work 2023.
“The nature of work has changed dramatically across industries in the last few decades due to rapid and repeated waves of automation. Nowhere is this more evident than in middle-skills positions – those that require less than a four-year college degree but more than a high school diploma.
America’s community colleges have been, and should remain, the education portal through which these workers pass. But increasingly, the ecosystem is in imbalance due to the growing gulf between those who teach and those who hire.
Both educators and employers are failing to meet the challenge of the moment: how to create a steady pipeline of workers required to keep the U.S. economy competitive and prospering.”
Read the full Harvard Business School report here.