State and Local Governments Facing Tough Decisions that Impact Working Families and Business
January 25, 2011
Despite some of the positive indicators of economic growth released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in its December jobs report earlier this month, state and local governments continue to struggle and face difficult decisions regarding spending cuts that will affect local communities, working families, and business.
Focusing on Community Colleges and Workforce Readiness
January 20, 2011
Julian L. Alssid, Founder and Executive Director, Workforce Strategy Center, has a timely and informative post on The Huffington Post, "When Plenty is Not Nearly Enough." Here is an excerpt: "As we kick off 2011, if you are in the higher education field, as I am, things are looking great . . . "
Business Leaders Agree: Workforce Readiness is a Critical Business Imperative
January 6, 2011
Corporate Voices for Working Families has released a report, titled, "What Are Business Leaders Saying About Workforce Readiness?". The report offers an in-depth analysis of a recent series of surveys and focus groups conducted with 150 American business leaders.
What are Business Leaders Saying About Workforce Readiness?
December 15, 2010
The future of American business competitiveness is directly tied to the quality and skills of the current and incoming workforce. But many entry level employees are transitioning from school to teh workforce without the skills needed to succeed at work. Corporate Voices for Working Families conducted a series of surveys and focus groups to gain a better understanding of business leaders' current level of engagement and interest in supporting the work readiness of their future employees.
Training an Ill-Prepared Workforce: Business Address the Growing Skills Gap
November 30, 2010
As the United States continues to navigate through a tough economic climate with consistently high unemployment rates, it is important to note that there are still about 3 million job openings throughout the country. In a recent story, titled, "To Fill Job Skills, Firm Brings raining in Hours," NPR examines the impact the skills gap is having on businesses and how some are attempting to combat the problem.
Corporate Voices: Ready by 21 Champion Award
November 18, 2010
Corporate Voices for Working Families and The Ready by 21 National Partnership are proud to announce the winners for the inaugural 2010 Champion Award: Preparing Youth for Work. The 2010 Champion Award is bestowed to the Individual Leader, Community and Company who displayed exceptional leadership, vision and commitment to create local private/public partnerships dedicated to ensuring that youth have the structures and supports needed to be ready for work.
Corporate Voices Releases Business Engagement Toolkit for Community Organizations
November 10, 2010
After decades of research and practice we know what works. When leaders in education, business, government and community organizations change the way they do business - aligning resources, building on existing high-quality supports and working together - we can improve outcomes for children and youth. Business partners play a critical role in supporting community efforts that create a prepared, innovative and competitive workforce.
Corporate Voices Workforce Readiness: Survey Finds the Nation's Youth Not Ready for Workforce Entry
October 28, 2010
Workplace Options, a global provider of work-life and employee support services, today announced a partnership with Corporate Voices for Working Families, the leading national business membership organization represneting the private sector on policy issues involving working families, to conduct research and polling on issues related to the workplace.
U.S. Failing Public Education System: A Global Competitiveness Issue
October 27, 2010
Corporate Voices for Working Families has been following with great interest the recent media blitz focused directly on our country’s public education system through: Education Nation, hosted by NBC News The newly released documentary by award-winning director Davis Guggenheim, Waiting for Superman Target® announcing a contribution of $500 million to [...]
Webinar: Building Broader Business and Education Partnerships: Baxter International, Inc.'s Science@Work Partnership with Chicago Public Schools
October 15, 2010
Business leaders and educators share common goals and challenges; both manage large, complex operations and want to ensure that students graduate high school prepared with the skills necessary to succeed in the workplace or in further educational opportunities. Collaboration between business and education leaders is imperative – these leaders should create meaningful, successful and long lasting partnerships to ensure that all youth are ready for college, work and life.
Youth Unemployment Hits Rock Bottom - We must act NOW.
October 5, 2010
Even as America emerges slowly out of the recession, too many of our young people are still not graduating high school or achieving a postsecondary education, which severely impacts their opportunity for growth in the labor market. Compared to other age groups, the unemployment rate for young people has always been on the higher end; however, the economic downturn has impacted young workers particularly hard. Since the start of the recession in December 2007, young adults (ages 16-24) have suffered the highest unemployment rate on record. By official estimates, unemployment among young workers reached 19.6 percent in April, the highest since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began tracking statistics in 1947. In reality, far more young people are out of work because many of them have given up on looking altogether, and are therefore not ‘counted’ in official unemployment tallies.
Can we afford to wait until the economy finally recovers to tackle the problem of youth unemployment?
Is Government the Answer for Workforce Readiness?
September 7, 2010
America’s future workforce is simply unprepared to face the demands of the business world.
According to a report titled, The Ill-Prepared U.S. Workforce: Exploring the Challenges of Employer-Provided Workforce Readiness Training,Corporate Voices found that businesses have had to provide training to entry-level workers in order to prepare them for the workforce, which places an increasingly heavy burden on the business community. The public, however, is increasingly calling for more government involvement in job training.
The Public and Employers Agree: Our System is Failing Youth Work Readiness
September 2, 2010
Are young people today prepared for work?
Corporate Voices for Working Families’ research – including the comprehensive studies and reports, Are They Really Ready to Work? and The Ill- Prepared US Workforce, demonstrate that employers find the majority of young people to be unprepared to succeed at work and in the changing and more demanding workplace of the 21st century. To solidify the known employer data, the survey was distributed to measure what the general public thinks about work readiness of young people.
With the generous support of Workplace Options, a partner company of Corporate Voices, Public Policy Polling surveyed the American public in August 2010 to gauge its perceptions of how prepared young people and new entrants to the workforce are, as well as how likely they are to succeed.
Complete to Compete: Improving Education and Economic Competitiveness
August 23, 2010
As a nation, we face the critical challenge of how to best prepare workers — especially young people — for jobs in the 21st century workplace and global economy. (See our recent blog post: “Workforce Readiness: The Link Between Education and Economic Competitiveness.”) And policy makers, business leaders, educators and others are focusing on solutions.
The National Governors Association, for example, has launched an initiative, Complete to Compete. Chaired by West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin, Complete to Compete “focuses on increasing the number of students in the United States who complete college degrees and certificates and improving the productivity of the country’s higher education institutions.”
We're No. 11! The World's "100 Best Countries" and the Need for Workforce Readiness
August 19, 2010
Newsweek has published its first-ever “100 Best Countries” special issue, which measures and ranks the countries in the world according to five indicators of national well-being: education, health, quality of life, economic competitiveness, and political environment.
Of the “100 Best Countries,” the U.S. ranks 11th, just behind Denmark and ahead of Germany, with an overall score of 85.51. What is notable is that of the countries ranked in the top 10, all of them are small in terms of either geographic size or population. In that sense, smaller is better.
Teen Voice 2010: Relationships that Matter to America’s Teens
July 30, 2010
Search Institute, a member along with Corporate Voices for Working Families of the Ready by 21 National Partnership, recently released Teen Voice 2010 a national survey of 1,860 15-year-olds, sponsored by Best Buy.
"This year’s Teen Voice survey shows us the importance of positive adult-teen relationships. As caring adults, we must all do a better job to give teens the support they need to thrive," said Brian Dunn, CEO, Best Buy Co., Inc. "Teens play a unique and important role in shaping the world in which we live, and it’s critical that we foster opportunities to make their voices heard and improve their chances for success."
Corporate Voices and Ready by 21 Update: Continued Success in Louisville
July 16, 2010
At the Corporate Voices’ Annual Meeting in May 2010, Louisville leaders presented a panel entitled, The Workforce Readiness Pipeline: K-12 Education and Business Partnerships Panel. Shortly after the Annual Meeting, on May 13, the education, business, faith, civic and community leaders of Louisville convened and signed onto a Joint Commitment to Improve Education Attainment.
The goal of the commitment is to move Louisville, a Ready by 21® city, into the top tier among its peer cities by raising education attainment so that by 2010 at least 40% of working-age adults hold a bachelor’s degree and 10% an associates degree. To achieve this goal requires adding at least 40,000 more bachelor’s degrees and 15,000 more associates degrees.
Corporate Voices and Ready by 21: College and Career Readiness
June 2, 2010
In a recent article titled College and Career Readiness published in The School Administrator, Karen Pittman, Co-Founder and President of the Forum for Youth Investment, asks: Even if students graduate high school, are they really equipped for the next stage?
Unsurprisingly, the answer she found was no.
“No matter who is doing the measuring, the college – and work-readiness rates of high school seniors and high school graduates are appalling low.”
Karen reports that only three in ten seniors, at best, are college – ready and up to a fourth of all first-year students at four-year colleges do not return for their second year. She cited Corporate Voices for Working Families’ research and quoted that four in ten high school graduates, at best, are work ready and that only 40 percent of business leaders surveyed offer some workforce readiness training to their workers.
Crushing Unemployment Among American Youth– The Need for Workforce Readiness
January 14, 2010
As the U.S. continues to cope with the fallout from financial crisis and as unemployment hovers around 10 percent, many are starting the new year with one goal in mind: finding a job. Although some may have luck, others are finding that the job market is unforgivable. In fact, unemployment seems to be affecting certain segments of the population worse than others.
According to a recent All Things Considered report on National Public Radio, 52 percent of African-American males between the ages of 16 and 19 are unemployed. This is an alarming statistic, and one that highlights the crisis facing at-risk youth in America today.