Are the $370 Million Wisconsin Receives in Federal Job Training Funds Efficiently Spent?
“If Wisconsin wants to make a dent in the skills gap, the state will have to make some serious investments in job training, advocates discussed at a luncheon in Brookfield Thursday,” writes Jeff Engel, Reporter for The Business Journal, who regularly reports about the manufacturing industry and technology in the state of Wisconsin. He also writes extensively about the skills gap issue and the disparity between manufacturers struggling to find talent versus high unemployment rates.
Tim Sullivan (Photo courtesy of Scott Paulus)
On November 8, 2012, the Tech Council and the Milwaukee Chapter of its Wisconsin Innovation Network hosted a discussion to review recent studies and researches done on Wisconsin’s current investment of its job training funds. According to Tim Sullivan, former Bucyrus International, Inc. CEO and current unpaid consultant for business and work force development for the state, the roughly $370 million in federal job training funds the state receives are “not highly effective or efficiently spent.” According to a recent report by Competitive Wisconsin Inc., Wisconsin currently invests less than $15 million in discretionary job training funds. Additionally, a recently-released study by ManpowerGroup, Milwaukee, studied the topic and made some recommendations to bridge the talent gap.
All involved in the conversation agreed that that there is a talent shortage in Wisconsin which will become prevalently increasing as the current work force reaches retirement age. Although the recommendations for solving this problem varied, the conclusion was that this was an imminent problem. It was suggested that the manufacturing sector should also partake in the rebuilding of the manufacturing trade work force.
States such as Pennsylvania and Minnesota, who are actively increasing the funds dedicated to these types of initiatives, were cited as models that work.
Attending the meeting also was Linda Salchenberger, Marquette University associate provost for academic planning and budgeting and co-chair of the Competitive Wisconsin study, who said the initiative didn’t just call for the state government to “simply throw money at the problem,“ but do to it in a way where state grants would match funds raised by businesses, economic development agencies and other groups for targeted initiatives with a proven talent need.”
