By Dallas Morning News Editorial

2:00 AM on Sep 5, 2022 CDT

Matching job openings with skilled workers has always been a challenge, but the mismatch is more acute today since many jobs require skills for tasks that didn’t exist 10 years ago. Even if those jobs and tasks existed a decade ago, they weren’t as integrated into everyday work.

The workplace that we have briefly stepped away from for the Labor Day holiday is a very different place today from what it was in the mid-2000s. Workers and employers are navigating new terms of engagement, with words like resilience and flexibility emerging as guiding principles. The workplace isn’t a single place anymore or even a communal experience in the traditional hang-around-the-water-cooler sense.

The expectations of work-life balance also have changed. Remote working opportunities sometimes conflict with traditional concepts of corporate culture building. “Quiet quitting,” an expression in need of a makeover, is a cacophony of workers setting boundaries, working smarter and slacking off.

On Friday, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the nation added 315,000 jobs in August, and the labor force participation rate edged up slightly to 62.4%, a post-pandemic high but still below pre-pandemic levels. However, there are still roughly 11.2 million job openings in the nation, according to the Labor Department’s latest Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, and too few people are seeking those jobs.

Job markets today can go from hot to cold to nonexistent overnight. Future generations are more likely to work more jobs and have multiple careers in a lifetime than previous generations, requiring workers to pursue lifelong learning to survive these changes. What the heck was a social media influencer or a blockchain analyst or a cloud architect a decade ago? And while a Uber or Lyft driver might be a modern iteration of a taxi driver, it is an industry unto itself and a symbol of the gig economy’s impact on work.

Demographic changes also signal that workers, especially minority and first-generation students, will need better routes to obtain relevant skills and experience to fill job openings. And we see important movement in this direction in our own backyard.

Recognizing this need, Dallas College, the county’s community college system, recently announced a $8.8 million federal grant to lead a workforce development program to train underrepresented populations for biotechnology jobs in North Texas, and it’s creating a workforce training center at the former Red Bird mall to train residents to compete for high-demand jobs. And Texas’ Higher Education Coordinating Board also is looking at ways to ease student pathways to degrees and credentials, expand work opportunities with private industry and assist midcareer employees with reinventing their skills.

The long-term health of our nation’s economy depends on a vibrant and resilient workforce, and it will take the collaboration of employers, workers and educators to get us there.

Dallas Morning News Editorial. Dallas Morning News editorials are written by the paper's Editorial Board and serve as the voice and view of the paper. The board considers a broad range of topics and is overseen by the Editorial Page Editor.