Washington will have more than 1.5 million job openings in the next eight years but it’s not currently training enough people to fill them.

a nonprofit run by Washington business leaders, found that the state needs about 600,000 more workers with postsecondary credentials than it is on pace to have. At the same time, the number of workers with high school diplomas, or less, will outpace the jobs available to them, leaving those fields more competitive.

“Washington’s education and training systems are not producing talent with the right skills at the right levels to keep pace,” said Marc Casale, founder and CEO of Kinetic West, which led the research for the report.

Washington’s job growth is expected to be 12.8% through 2032, compared to 2.8% nationally. Of the 1.5 million job openings through 2032, about 640,000 are new jobs and 910,000 are from retirements.

That means Washington not only needs to scale up training for new types of jobs but also for current ones that will lose employees, Casale said.

Three quarters of those jobs will require some postsecondary credentials, and 45% will require at least a bachelor’s degree.

Washington will also have about 639,000 uncredentialed workers, but not enough jobs for them to fill, leaving about a quarter million workers with few employment options, according to the report.

Counting on migration from other states is not enough to meet the job gaps, Casale said, so the state must do more to train its workforce.

To meet the growing gap, the report includes five recommendations that the state should prioritize.

The first and most important is increasing the number of people receiving bachelor’s degrees in Washington, said Brian Jeffries, policy director at the roundtable.

To do so, the state should find ways to fill open capacity at its colleges and universities, especially at regional branches and online campuses. This could be done through more guaranteed admissions programs and financial aid resources. Washington should also look at expanding applied bachelor’s programs and direct transfer opportunities at community and technical colleges.

Other recommendations include prioritizing enrollment and completion of apprenticeships, training in high-demand jobs and supporting more employer-led training programs. Jeffries said he wants the Legislature to continue investing in workforce development programs that encourage employers to take part in training their employees.

Training and education opportunities should focus on occupations with the highest need. Over the next eight years, those are likely to be in advanced computing, construction and skilled trades, clean technology, health care, business and management, and education.

Another recommendation is to provide more opportunities for K-12 students to earn postsecondary credits and to prepare for life after high school.

Part of that will come from an overhaul in the state’s graduation requirements, which the State Board of Education is preparing to do over the next few years, Jeffries said. He said the business leaders should be part of that process to make sure high school graduation requirements align with what postsecondary schools require.

Central Washington University President Jim Wohlpart said he thinks of the workforce challenge as an opportunity for the state to rethink its curriculum and higher education system to create clear pathways through higher education and into the workforce.

“We need to embed college in the high school so that the transition from high school into post secondary education is as seamless as middle school to high school,” Wohlpart said.

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It came last summer in a white envelope she couldn’t wait to open. Hillary Barber, 29, had already interviewed for a position at a soon-to-open coffee house in Sleepy Hollow, 45 minutes north of Manhattan, but didn’t know if she earned a spot. 

A witty and tenacious young woman with a megawatt smile, Barber has cerebral palsy, a condition that limits her mobility and makes it difficult for her to speak. Like so many other developmentally disabled adults across the country — and, particularly, in — she had trouble finding work after she graduated from high school in 2013 at age 19. 

That letter, she hoped, could change everything.

“It is with great pleasure that I extend the following employment offer to you,” read the invitation from the nonprofit Sleepy Coffee, Too, founded by former special education teacher Kim Kaczmarek.  

“I’m so happy,” Barber told an aide that night. “My life is complete.”

It would mark Barber’s first-ever paid work, an enormous victory for a young woman who was too often underestimated: Just were employed in 2022, up from 19.1% the year before, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. For those without a disability, the figure was 65.4% in 2022, up from 63.7 percent the prior year.

A smaller offshoot of what will soon be Sleepy Coffee, Too — called The Little Shop of Coffee and Dry Goods — opened in a cozy 700-square-foot storefront in June 2023, employing Barber and 16 other adults with developmental disabilities. Kaczmarek, 64, came out of retirement to open the store, staking $125,000 of her own money on the venture.

Many of her employees are her former students. The staff is devoted — they ask their families to reschedule vacations and other outings around their shifts — and eager to take on the working world’s challenges. That exposure has greatly improved their communication skills. 

“I had some kids who were virtually nonverbal who are now some of my best customer service employees,” Kaczmarek said. “They found their voice.”

As the employees are growing, so is the business. Sleepy Coffee, Too is poised to move to an adjacent downtown location in the next few months that will double its size and allow the shop to expand its hours. 

On a recent rainy Sunday afternoon, customer traffic was slow but employee Maggie Collier, 21, was ready to help anyone who walked through the door. Sitting behind the counter, she spent the afternoon brewing coffee and refilling the store’s milk, sugar, sweeteners, cups, stirrers and napkins. 

The store, neatly stocked with all manner of coffee, is packed with other items, too, including books written by and on behalf of disabled adults and sold by the family of a Long Island man with Down syndrome. 

A mannequin in the left-hand corner models a brown zippered sweatshirt and baseball cap emblazoned with the store’s logo while a waist-high display case offers cookies and granola Like many of its coffee house competitors, the store’s walls and shelves are adorned with signs bearing cheeky messages like, “Espresso Yourself.”

Collier, who learned of the shop through her father’s friend, the also now-retired schools superintendent in neighboring Tarrytown and Kaczmarek’s former boss, is eager for the new space to open. An avid baker, she’s excited about adding snacks to the menu.

“I’m looking forward to working with more customers in a larger coffee shop,” she said. “And I like working with people my age. I like taking initiative.” 

Dreams of a coffee shop during COVID

Kaczmarek has long known her students had a hard time beating employment odds. The pandemic made their plight even more difficult. During that dark time, the former teacher’s heart would break when she saw her former students on the streets of this Hudson River village that’s home to Washington Irving’s legends, the headless horseman and Ichabod Crane. 

Their regression was stark, Kaczmarek said. Young people whom she coached for years to meet her gaze and engage in polite conversation were now averting their eyes. The educator didn’t want further isolation to undermine any more of her — or her students’ — good work. But she didn’t immediately know how to help. 

The teacher reflected on the successful coffee cart she and her students opened — she used it to help them learn about operating a small business and to fundraise for their field trips — in her district’s administrative office in 2016 and how it grew even more popular at the high school. 

Neurotypical students designed and helped build a cart complete with display cases, lights and locking wheels. Students and staff proved devoted patrons: Sleepy Coffee’s brownies would sell out in minutes each morning.

“There was a respect toward my students that had never been there before,” Kaczmarek recalled. “I think it really changed the culture of school.”

She remembered how members of the football team would high-five her kids as they passed each other in the hall. Kaczmarek’s classroom was in the main hallway and her students were highly visible.

“The more they were out doing things that everyone else did, it made not just the students, but the staff realize we are more the same than different,” she said. “They want to have friends, a boyfriend or girlfriend, to be invited to places. It took the stigma away. It became normal. The other students got it very quickly.”

But how could she translate that sense of fairness and inclusion to the outside world? Would the general public have the same goodwill? Sure, she had seen it done before. But it had been decades.

Helping Adam

Kaczmarek was 11 years old when a developmentally disabled boy was born to a family across the street in her hometown of Briarcliff Manor, just north of Sleepy Hollow. This was the 1960s, an era when many such children were immediately sent off to live in institutions, often at the . 

Not Adam. 

His family wanted to keep him close, but they couldn’t care for him alone. So, they invited friends and family to work and play with him each day in shifts.

“His mother had a big schedule in the house and people signed up and were given fast training,” said Kaczmarek, who was among the volunteers. 

Back then, she said, the favored technique was “patterning,” a series of exercises meant to help children with neurological impairments. That, and trying to build Adam’s gross motor skills. 

“It really had an impact on me, watching my neighborhood come together like that,” Kaczmarek said. “It was an incredible time.”

And it taught her a lesson that would become her mantra. 

“There is always a way to solve any problem,” she said. “When people work together, miracles can happen.”

‘It turned out to be good’

Kaczmarek went on to earn a bachelor’s in special education from Syracuse University and a master’s from Fordham. Adam eventually became one of her students. 

She hoped — if she could only figure out how — to generate the same support for her former students today, and approached them to gauge their interest in opening a brick-and-mortar coffee shop. They were elated at the thought. 

Kaczmarek inherited the $125,000 seed money from her parents and remembered what her father told her just before he died: Don’t wait too long to do whatever it is you want to do with the rest of your life.

She’s then raised an additional $200,000 through grants, donations and fundraising and she’s always looking for more to add staff and expand their hours. 

Adam’s sister, Kaczmarek’s friend since childhood, grew up to run a successful coffee shop of her own and has become a valuable mentor. And another friend in the community alerted Kaczmarek to the bigger spot her shop will soon occupy: It was abandoned and available for rent at a reasonable price. 

Kaczmarek’s students have been working on the project for well more than a year, meeting at first through Zoom and then in person as they opened the first storefront. 

“They are stimulated every day. They have an obligation. They are part of a business,” she said. 

Jake Loerker, 24, worked at a movie theater taking tickets, handing out snacks and vacuuming the floor before he landed at the Beekman Avenue shop, where he mostly handles money. 

“You know what?” he said of Sleepy Coffee, Too. “It turned out to be good. The customers are friendly.”

Elvira Juarez, who worked as Kaczmarek’s teaching assistant, serves on the nonprofit’s board of directors and whose child is among the shop’s employees, has watched her 31-year-old daughter blossom as her involvement with the coffee shop grew. So excited about work, she prepares for her shift days in advance. 

“On Thursday and Friday, she’s always getting her uniform ready even though it’s not until two days after,” Juarez said. “She’s always making sure it’s clean.” 

Hillary Barber, the young woman who got her first paying job at 29 and who uses adaptive technology to communicate, treats her job with the same dedication. 

Though it was a challenge, she was determined to operate the register from her wheelchair and after a few modifications to the store, she did just that. Janis, her mother and herself retired special education teacher, is grateful that Kaczmarek gave her daughter a chance. 

“She is definitely smart,” the mother said of Hillary. “She picks up things quickly. But this was really her first opportunity to work. I’m so grateful for Kim.”

OMAHA — Nebraska’s “brain drain” of people with a bachelor’s degree or higher leaving the state is persistent and worsening, according to newly released U.S. Census data.

But the same survey also raises an alarm about who else is fleeing.

“Notably, the data reveals that individuals 25 years and older with other (lesser) levels of educational attainment also are leaving the state,” says Josie Schafer of the Center for Public Affairs Research at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.

Her office, which consults with state policymakers and legislators about workforce and economic development patterns, analyzed migration-related findings from the American Community Survey’s five-year estimates through 2022, which were released this month.

In 2022, the state lost an estimated 1,089 adults aged 25 and older with an education of high school diploma or less. While a relatively small slice, Schafer said that the drop marks a shift from several previous years when Nebraska was attracting individuals in that education group.

In the category of individuals with some college or an associate degree, Nebraska saw a net gain in 2022, though small: 35. For perspective, the state in 2019 had a net increase in that population of more than 2,000.

Schafer said the data did not allow her to drill into specific reasons why the people with less education than a bachelor’s or professional degree might not be finding Nebraska as alluring as in the past.

She believes patterns could be driven by job availability, better wages and job benefits offered elsewhere, or perhaps quality of life factors such as housing and child care.

“The idea of Nebraska being a low cost-of-living-state — they might not be feeling it,” said Schafer.

Erin Porterfield, executive director of nonprofit Heartland Workforce Solutions, which serves Douglas, Sarpy and Washington Counties, checked with network partners to better understand why their clients might be eyeing the exit door.

Among reasons cited are that negative experiences with racism “contribute to feeling unsafe” and to reduced employment and social opportunities.

“Feeling like Nebraska isn’t for everyone,” was another refrain, along with increased limits “on rights for people of diverse identities, including transgender care.”

Porterfield also said Nebraska is relatively early in establishing a solid “employment pipeline,” which leaves some young adults unclear about their employment and career opportunities.

While employers generally are “trying now, more than ever” to connect with young people to show what a career pathway could look like, she said, such linkages have a ways to go.

Especially for Nebraskans who need to support themselves financially after high school, Porterfield said, “they often feel lost.”

Meanwhile, said Schafer, the exodus of people with a bachelor’s degree or more remains a “critical issue” for Nebraska.

Her showed a sustained trend, with the state losing a net 4,610 people with that higher education level in 2022, compared to the previous year’s 4,415.

To be sure, there are still more than 400,000 individuals with a bachelor’s degree or higher living in Nebraska. “Lots of people stay in Nebraska,” Schafer said, “But the fact the trend is continuing to be negative is certainly something that should give us pause.”

In raw numbers, public-sector unions reaped a benefit from this hiring surge, adding some 83,000 members to their ranks. Though the percentage of government employees who belong to a union fell to a low of 33% in 2022, the new members were certainly a welcome addition.

Unfortunately for the unions, the good news was not widespread. In fact, the growth in membership was entirely due — and then some — to one state: California.

The Golden State added more than 250,000 government jobs in 2022, enabling its public employees unions to add more than 111,000 members. Twenty-eight other states added a combined 256,496 public-sector union members. But 21 states and the District of Columbia lost 284,517 members, for a net decline of 28,021 outside of California. New York and Minnesota were the biggest losers.

Each year, Barry Hirsch of Georgia State University and David Macpherson of Trinity University produce this data for their Union Membership and Coverage Database, posting it on their website . Thanks to their work combing through Current Population Survey figures, I was able to create this table, which shows the total number of government employees and public-sector union members for each state in 2022, along with the change from 2021.

Public sector union membership by state, 2022:

Click here if you’re having trouble viewing the chart.

Examining data for all 50 states and D.C., there is a clear divide between states where unions are growing along with hiring and states where membership losses continue to mount.

This trend should not be surprising. Before the Supreme Court ruled in 2018 that public-sector unions could no longer charge non-members an agency fee, growth in the government workforce led almost automatically to growth in union membership. Now, unions must actively recruit each new hire. It stands to reason that unions in some states will do this better than others, and that those efforts will be affected by local conditions.

We can’t use this data to draw any firm conclusions about teachers unions. When categorized by occupation, the numbers include both public and private schools, plus teachers unions include significant numbers of other types of workers as members. What the data does show is a drop in the number of unionized teachers.

The percentage of elementary and middle school teachers who belonged to a union fell slightly from 46.6% in 2021 to 46.3% in 2022. The percentage for secondary school teachers showed a steeper decline, from 49.6% to 47.1%. The percentage for special education teachers similarly tumbled, from 55.8% to 51.4%.

All this suggests that public employees unions will need even greater levels of hiring just to tread water. When this runs headlong into the loss of COVID relief money and/or a recession, there will be an unprecedented display of labor unrest in government. Brace yourselves.

Mike Antonucci’s Union Report appears most Wednesdays; see the full archive.

The nation’s largest group of K-12 charter schools said last week that the will provide four years of mentoring, summer internship assistance, financial literacy training, networking advice and funding to defray college costs — supports valued at $60,000 per student. The grant covers 50 students a year, up to 250 students over five years.

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For KIPP students such as Harlem-raised Airam Cruz, who landed a spot in a prestigious high school as a result of attending a KIPP middle school, and then entered Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, these networking-assist scholarships mean everything.

Cruz, who was chosen for a similar (which inspired the Rales) got a summer internship at a computer gaming company as a result of meeting the company’s chief executive officer at a 2018 Silicon Valley dinner hosted at the house of Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg Goldberg is her late husband.

Also as part of that Goldberg scholarship program: Cruz, now 21, had his own mentor for four years of college, former Samsung Chief Innovation Officer David Eun. “I texted him almost any day about anything. Life advice, school advice.”

What’s truly newsworthy about the Goldberg and Rales scholarship programs is why they are needed in the first place.

Two decades ago, KIPP and other top-performing charter networks started out with a simple promise to parents: Send your sons and daughters to our schools and we will get them enrolled in college. As years passed, however, every charter network found out that enrolling in college wasn’t the same as graduating.

As early as 2009, KIPP leaders realized their college-going students were falling short on actually graduating, and in April 2011 released a starkly worded revealing that only 33 percent of its KIPP middle school students were graduating from four-year colleges within six years.

While that rate was three times the national graduation rate for low-income, minority students, it was far below what KIPP had predicted: a graduation success rate of 75 percent. That was a wake-up call for KIPP, which launched aggressive changes including expanding its network to opening elementary and high schools to give students more time on task with KIPP teachers and counselors.

While those changes, and similar ones at other college-focused charter networks around the country, succeeded in boosting college graduation rates, KIPP and others soon discovered yet another unpleasant reality: simply earning a college degree wasn’t enough. Too often, their graduates settled for jobs that fell short of the kinds of professional opportunities landed by white and Asian college graduates.

That amounts to underemployment, explains Tevera Stith, senior director for National Alumni Impact at KIPP.

“We see more and more students not having access to proper networking who then struggle to get the kind of work experience needed to land the perfect first job that will propel their career,” said Stith For college students coming from middle- and upper-income families, those internships and first-job connections often come from family connections.

A 2016 survey of KIPP college graduates revealed that roughly half felt they were underemployed. The most common reason is having to pass on unpaid internships during their college years.

“When they can get a paid job at a local supermarket they are absolutely going to take that supermarket job,” said Stith.

Programs such as Rales offer students salaries for summer internships that don’t pay.

Underemployment is what I saw first hand when reporting the book, , which documented the first graduating class at KIPP’s Gaston College Prep, a school in rural North Carolina located in a town where college graduation is not an expectation. But in this class, 61 percent of the graduating seniors earned four-year degrees within six years, a rate that exceeds the degree attainment rates for middle-class students.

While that success rate was impressive, it soon became clear that a fair number of those alumni didn’t consider themselves successes in life, at least not when compared to middle-class college graduates. While they were all employed, their jobs often fell into the category of underemployment, such as a finance major working as a bank teller.

These latest iterations in the learning curve around what it takes to get low-income minority students into college, through college and into a job commensurate with their skills, explains the multiple name changes for KIPP’s college promotion programs. It began in 1998 as Kipp To College, then in 2008 became KIPP Through College. In 2021 it became which acknowledges both the need to help students with non-college careers and that even college graduates need ongoing assistance.

Other charter networks make similar efforts. The New York City-based Success Academy schools, for example, have their .

The Northeast-based , which usually turns in the top college graduation rates, rivaling the success rates for middle-class students, also recognizes the need for follow-up support. Uncommon is building a network to link all its alums and connect them to outside organizations for career support.

Chicago-based Noble Network of Charter Schools offers one-on-one career counseling and networking events as well as employer programs like .

Aide Acosta, Noble’s chief college officer, said a 2016 survey of their alums showed that six months after earning college degrees only 41 percent had full-time employment or were in graduate school. Compared to middle-class college graduates, she said, “our students were having different career exposures.” After launching Noble’s coaching/job placement efforts, that number is now up to 80 percent.

Some students get exposed to multiple programs. Kourtney Buckner, for example, attended a KIPP middle school in Atlanta. KIPP then helped her win acceptance at George Washington University. Buckner, a junior who plans on being a lawyer, has a KIPP college adviser who checks on her and the network helped her land a KIPP-supported summer internship at a Washington-based nonprofit.

At the same time, Buckner is also a scholar, a program that ensures first-generation students find a network of similar students to support them in college. “Having a Posse cohort here has made all the difference,” said Buckner. “I have nine other (Posse scholars) here and I also have a Posse mentor.”

Applications for the Rales Scholars Program opened Oct. 1 to KIPP high school seniors or KIPP middle school alumni now in their senior year. The first group of Rales scholars will join the program in May 2022.

Disclosure: Walton Family Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Carnegie Corporation of New York provide financial support to KIPP and ����Ӱ��.