Where will the next generation of Minnesota workers come from? And will there be enough of them?
As many businesses are already discovering, it’s getting tough to find good employees. And it’s expected to get tougher. According to a Minnesota State Demographic Center forecast, the number of working-age Minnesotans (ages 25 through 64) will rise modestly from 2,759,000 in 2005 to 3,046,200 in 2030—a 10 percent increase, well below the 27 percent growth rate for the total population. By contrast, the number of Minnesotans 65 and older will increase by 670,300 people to 1,290,600 (from 620,300 in 2005), a jump of 117 percent.
But many state businesspeople fear not only a lack of workers—but also that potential employees won’t be ready to work.
Future work force concerns are focused on Minnesota’s high-school graduation rate. Of the nearly 70,000 students who enter state high schools each year, various studies show that between 10 and 20 percent of them don’t graduate. Whatever the exact number, that means around 10,000 additional young people each year are less likely to have the kinds of skills employers need.
What’s more, by the time “at-risk” kids enter the work world, it’s typically too late to catch up and learn those skills. According to Ready 4 K, a St. Paul–based nonprofit focused on improving kindergarten readiness in Minnesota, the term “at risk” describes children who typically don’t have healthy food, a safe and stable place to live with a loving family, financial resources, support for developing learning skills, or some combination of these. A disproportionate number of at-risk kids are minorities and live in low-income households.
Now a group that includes some of the state’s top business executives is taking the matter into their own hands. They’re focusing on very young children, because the research they’ve seen suggests that learning skills need to be planted at a very early age.
This spring, the Minnesota Early Learning Foundation (MELF), a nonprofit applied-research group in St. Paul founded in 2005, will kick off a pilot version of its the Early Childhood Development Scholarship program in St. Paul’s Frogtown neighborhood. About 1,200 at-risk children and their families will be eligible for the program, which will provide the parents of three- and four-year-olds a scholarship that will help their children attend any approved preschool or facility-based early-childhood development program.
MELF’s primary mission is to determine the most cost-effective way of assuring that children from low-income families are ready for kindergarten. MELF is attempting to raise $30 million to fund a research and development effort that will yield a set of recommendations for scaling an effective early-childhood education system in Minnesota. It’s doing this through the development of a quality-rating system for child care providers and early-education programs, and the piloting of the scholarship program. The Center for Early Education and Development at the University of Minnesota is leading an evaluation of the various early-childhood development programs in Minnesota.
