Ed Rust, chairman and CEO of State Farm Mutual, says U.S. economy is increasingly dependent on underrepresented groups.
A report from the Committee for Economic Development of the Conference Board (CED), featured at its spring policy conference Wednesday, provides some insight into how businesses, big and small, view the impact of post-secondary education and workforce-related training.
The CED is a nonprofit public policy organization based in Washington that researches four principal areas: education, fiscal health, global competitiveness, and democratic institutions. In January, CED joined forces with the New York City-based Conference Board.
A commonly repeated refrain from almost every quarter is that the nation has a “skills gap” that is expected only to grow, exacerbated by low postsecondary degree attainment rates. Typically, the term “skills gap” covers a swath of societal issues—the disparities in achievement between low and high income students as well as between underrepresented minority students and White and Asian students.
“Our economy increasingly depends on the successful education of those low-income and minority students that have historically been left behind,” said Ed Rust, chairman and CEO of State Farm Mutual, at the policy conference on Wednesday.
However, a recent study from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), published in February, showed that the American millennials as a whole have fallen behind their peers in developed OECD countries. The study found that American millennials are lagging in terms of numeracy, literacy, and problem solving.
For businesses and corporations hoping to recruit the highest achieving workers, these trends are concerning. “It’s not just an education problem but to a degree we look at a shattering of the American dream, with the failure that we face of the disconnect between education and the needs of business,” said Carl Camden, president and chief executive officer of Kelly Services, at a Wednesday panel.
