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Our Future Workforce

Date: 
Jan 27

This organization and our community have talked at great length about the effects of the recent economic downturn on our regional workforce, but now we need to look towards the future and examine the impact that our regional strengths and weaknesses will have on the workforce in the coming years. During our most recent CEO Roundtable meeting, Bashir Ali, Director of the Workforce Network, gave a presentation on what the future of our local workforce, and there were some points that I believe are vital for our business community to realize.


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Over the next three decades, we are going to see a shortage of nearly 30 million people in our workforce. This will be caused by many factors including a lower growth rate in the United States, retirement of the baby boomer generation, a shortage of skilled workers and (perhaps most importantly) the lagging educational achievement of the U.S.

The jobs of the coming decades are going to require higher skillsets and education levels. We will see more global competitiveness, new technologies and massive amounts of innovation happening at a very fast pace. There will be an increased focus on technology and an entirely new set of jobs from which to choose.

Unfortunately, we may not be able compete tomorrow because our students are not making the grade today. We have terrible school dropout rates, students rank very low on the global scale in math and science, there is a huge need for remedial Math and English courses at the entry college level and we have a staggeringly high rate of adult illiteracy.
Without a solid and educated workforce to handle the jobs in our community, we will not be sustainable.

The Heartland Partnership family of companies stresses the importance of collaboration. It is essential for us to work together to make changes that will positively affect our region. We saw the benefits of collaboration on the Build the Block project and the Peoria Charter School Initiative. Let's keep up the spirit of collaboration that this region is known for, and continue growing our region.

Click here to download the powerpoint presentation from Bashir Ali.