Gov. Matt Blunt today received the Workforce 2025 Report aimed at identifying ways to strengthen Missouri’s future by preparing students now for the workforce needs of the future as well as retraining current workers who will make up more than half of Missouri’s workforce in the year 2025.
The report is the first from the P-20 Council, a group focused on coordinating learning from preschool education (P) to graduate school and the workforce (20) that was created when the governor signed authorizing legislation. The governor also announced the launch of a P-20 Council Internet site to provide stakeholders comprehensive education to workforce information.
“In order for our students to succeed we must lay the groundwork now by identifying the needs our state will have when our youngest generation enters the workforce. We must work to ensure younger Missourians develop the skills necessary to compete in the global economy of the 21st Century,” Gov. Blunt said. “Though we cannot predict every innovation that American ingenuity and research will create by the year 2025, we do know that innovation will occur, and that the future will require a flexible, well-educated workforce. I look forward to reviewing the Workforce 2025 report to help better prepare Missouri for our future.”
The Workforce 2025 Report noted that many of Missouri’s top employment sectors will require significantly more math and science intensive occupations and that a functional level of digital literacy will be required of every worker if they are to remain marketable in the 2025 economy. It was also noted that 60 percent of the workforce in 2025 is already working today. The report included the following strategies to prepare Missouri students for the future:
- Regional summits to raise awareness, network assets, plan, and act locally to improve the quality and relevance of education and training to ensure that Missourians have the right talent and fit for family-supporting jobs specific to those regions.
- A continued emphasis on implementing the METS recommendations to ensure that P- 20 education in Missouri is preparing a critical mass of students for high-wage math and science intensive occupations of the future.
- Forging greater collaboration among state departments responsible for K-12, higher education, and economic development to improve vertical alignment from one educational level to the next as well as horizontal alignment with future business and industry demand.
- A continued emphasis on targeting high-technology industry clusters in a coordinated fashion to address their specific needs, including the need for a sustainable pipeline of well-educated, highly-skilled workers.
- Maximizing community assets to improve Missouri’s attractiveness to young degreed professionals, both home-grown and those recruited from other locales.
- A continued retooling of adult workforce programs to ensure that flexible opportunities for relevant skill development are available to current workers who are projected to makeup over half of the 2025 workforce and who will need to continuously learn, unlearn, and relearn 21st Century competencies.
- Recognizing that significant numbers of Missouri’s workers are aging and working beyond normal retirement age. Adult retraining offerings will need to be flexible enough to accommodate those mature workers who chose to reinvent themselves for new careers.
The complete Workforce 2025 report is available on the P-20 Council’s new Internet site at www.P-20.mo.gov. The site also features updates on the governor’s METS Initiative, updates from the P-20 Council and promising practices aimed at strengthening the skill levels of Missourians at all levels of education.
The P-20 Council consists of the directors from the Department of Economic Development, the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, and the Department of Higher Education and the chairs of the State Board of Education and Coordinating Board of Higher Education. The Council is designed to help provide a better, stronger, and more effective education and workforce-training system for all Missourians.
The Council is charged with exploring ways to align academic content from pre-school to college graduation, with the goal of helping ensure that Missouri students transition smoothly into grade school, from grade school to middle school, middle school to high school, high school to college, and college to the working world with success.
Working with Missouri’s General Assembly, Gov. Blunt increased funding for elementary and secondary education by half a billion dollars over the last three years. Funding increases the governor championed and signed to support education at all levels, when combined with his recommendations for additional increases next year, total $662.6 million for K-12 and $233 million for higher education. This investment in our students at all levels, supports the P-20 mission and will build opportunities for Missouri’s future prosperity. Gov. Blunt has made growing Missouri’s economy and expanding opportunities to Missouri’s working families a high priority with programs like the Missouri Quality Jobs Act that helps create jobs that pay good wages and that provide health care benefits for employees.