S2C-Colorado launches, releases report.

Business, Labor, Workforce, and Education Leaders Launch Skills2Compete-Colorado Campaign

Skills2Compete-Colorado launched today with the release of Colorado’s Forgotten Middle-Skill Jobs. The study, written by National Skills Coalition in partnership with SkillBuild Colorado and released today at the Colorado Community College Summit, projects close to 300,000 "middle-skill" job openings for Colorado by 2019. The report found that although the recession has slowed current employment growth, middle-skill jobs (including new jobs and replacement) will account for nearly 40 percent of all openings between 2009 and 2019. As Colorado moves from recession into recovery, employers will likely once again face the challenge of finding quality middle-skill workers—slowing the pace of economic growth.

Despite Colorado’s investments in postsecondary education and workforce training, the state is at serious risk of a “middle-skills gap.” And at the national level, proposals by Congress threaten to dismantle the state’s public workforce system. Colorado must ensure that its workforce has the necessary education and training to meet the labor demands of the future in order to ensure the state’s economic recovery and long-term prosperity.

Backed by a broad coalition of business, labor, workforce and education leaders, the Skills2Compete-Colorado campaign is calling on state leaders to embrace a strong vision to guide an economic and education strategy that would allow all Coloradoans to improve their skills and secure Colorado’s place in a 21st-century economy:

Every Colorado resident should have access to the equivalent of at least two years of education or training past high school—leading to a vocational credential, industry certification, or one's first two years of college—to be pursued at whatever point and pace makes sense for individual workers and industries. Every person must also have access to the basic skills needed to pursue such education.

Skills2Compete-Colorado joins thirteen other states as part of NSC's national Skills2Compete initiative, a non-partisan campaign to ensure the nation's workforce has the skills needed to meet business demand, foster innovation, and grow shared prosperity. Skills2Compete encourages America to address U.S. competitiveness in a way that includes the vast majority of future workers—jobs in the middle of the skilled labor market that require some training beyond high school, but not a four-year degree.