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For some time now, Brian Harris Autoplex General Manager Jack Francioni hasn’t bothered promoting his service department. The Slidell dealership lost 10 of its 14 mechanics

after the hurricane. Replacing them has taken Francioni more than two years and recruiting trips to St. Louis, Dallas and Florida. He now pays much higher salaries and foots the bill for education and moving expenses — none of which was necessary before. “It is very hard to find skilled technicians,” Francioni says. “And not having those people limits how much business you can go out there and get. As much as you try to advertise, if you don’t have the people to do the work, all you’re doing is creating angry customers. The labor shortage hasn’t allowed us to grow our business and has definitely cost us money.”

More than 150 miles west in Lafayette, Richard Zuschlag needs 100 paramedics ⎯ and he needs them now.

The Acadian Ambulance CEO has gone to extremes to find them. The firm offers EMT training in 13 public high schools in hopes of nurturing new workers; it is also formalizing an agreement with the military to attract medics leaving the service. Three recruiters just returned from Ohio and Illinois, where they offered experienced prospects $45,000 salaries and $20,000 signing bonuses for a two-year commitment.

“When I operate short-staffed, there’s no one to respond to 911 calls,” Zuschlag says. “My overtime costs are astronomical, and it probably isn’t healthy to have medics working so much overtime. It increases our risk exposure and causes a lot of stress on the job.”

Eighty miles further west on the other end of the corridor, Leucadia National Corporation is preparing to erect a $1.6 billion cogeneration plant. Who will build it? Probably a lot of carpenters, welders and pipefitters from other states.

Southwest Louisiana economic development officials hailed the project ⎯ partly because construction will bring about 3,000 new jobs to the region. But realistically, finding skilled Louisianans to fill them will be tough.

A Southwest Louisiana Economic Development Alliance workforce study late last fall concluded the area had only enough construction and craft workers to “meet the normal needs of Southwest Louisiana,” but any demand beyond that “will continue to be met by workers from outside the region.”

The greatest threat to the economic boom along the 10/12 corridor right now isn’t the recession or the housing slump. It’s the meager supply of up-to-par workers.

Louisiana firms need to hire at least 100,000 people right now. That means five of every 100 jobs are vacant.

Corridor companies are desperate for workers ⎯ and not just in construction, but nearly every sector, from the lowest-paid convenience store clerk to the priciest engineers and researchers. The latest job-vacancy survey indicates the most severe shortages are in financial services (Lake Charles and the Northshore), public administration (Lafayette), and professional and business services (Baton Rouge).

Consequently, new firms are reluctant to set up shop and existing ones can’t expand, meaning fewer career and advancement opportunities for those who call the corridor home.

“The bad news is that our Louisiana employers are struggling to fill these positions ⎯ and year after year, more sit vacant,” says Gov. Bobby Jindal. “At the same time, Louisiana’s citizens have fewer opportunities to move up, earn more and provide for their families. The lack of economic mobility discourages many Louisianans, including thousands of young people who have left our state to pursue their dreams.”

Louisiana has been dancing with workforce disaster for two decades. In the mid-1980s, a downturn in the oil industry brought with it the worst recession in history, and 48,000 lost jobs sent young families packing. As a result, the number of adults entering the workforce is expected to dwindle at least through 2014.

“A lot of women of childbearing age got into a truck with a U-Haul trailer attached,” says LSU economist Loren Scott. “We lost those births and now we’re paying for it. That’s the reason the labor market is getting tight.”

Add to that the fact that baby boomers are reaching retirement age.

The paucity is particularly hard-felt along the corridor, where the population continues to flourish, and high oil and gas prices, post-hurricane reconstruction and GO Zone incentives make for a thriving economy. Says Scott: “We have the perfect laboratory for a very tight labor market.”

The best evidence is this: Unemployment in Louisiana is at a record low of 3.5%. Along the corridor, it’s even lower ⎯ 3.4%, with St. Tammany leading the pack at 2.6%.

Labor issues are the top two concerns for 70% of prospective firms the Louisiana Department of Economic Development is pursuing. A recent Baton Rouge Area Chamber survey found the same level of regional employers struggling to recruit workers.

LED Secretary Stephen Moret (above) calls it a “huge economic obstacle.”

“We cannot expect existing businesses to remain in our state, let alone expand, if they cannot find the workers they need,” Louisiana Association of Business & Industry President Dan Juneau adds. “Never mind trying to recruit new companies.”

The oft-cited, low-performing public education system contributes to the problem, to be sure. But the state also didn’t get around to creating a community and technical college system until 10 years ago ⎯ about 30 years after much of the rest of the country did. As far back as the 1970s, the Public Affairs Research Council of Louisiana insisted vocational schools needed some serious tending.

As a result, the state’s workforce is not only too small to fill available jobs; it is also severely mismatched.

Consider that 8% of high school graduates enroll in a two-year institution, but 55% of the jobs demand that level of training. By comparison, 35% of working-age adults pursue a four-year degree when only 21% of the jobs demand it. And a whopping 57% have a high-school diploma or less, yet less than a quarter of available jobs can be done with that little education.

On top of that, some 40% of Louisiana adults don’t work at all, many of them because they lack even the basic education, training or work ethic. That’s compared to 34% nationwide.

“Though so much of our history, a person could earn a good living and support a family with just a high-school diploma,” says Louisiana Technical Community & Technical College System President Joe May (right). “But 80% of new jobs require some education beyond high school, and certainly along the corridor, that’s the trend. The emergence of technology has drastically changed the workplace.”

It’s a phenomenon Labor Department Secretary Tim Barfield dubs “an alignment challenge. We need to keep people in high school, and we also need to get them additional education beyond high school. But they don’t all need to go to a four-year institution.”

This fall, LCTCS enrolled a record 52,000 students. Six of its campuses had double-digit growth, and South Louisiana Community College in Lafayette popped up on the nation’s-fastest-growing list. Sounds like a real turnaround for the workforce, until you realize the system needs to enroll more than three times that number by 2012 to meet demand.

Even those students who do make it to the two-year programs, however, don’t necessarily find their way to high-demand training programs. The system gets a certain amount of funding per student, regardless of the cost of the type of training they need. That quirk virtually ignores actual workforce demands and encourages two-year schools to develop low-cost programs (think nail technicians, massage therapists and hair stylists) and discourages high-cost ones (technology).

“This is going to require the engagement of business and industry to help articulate what the needs are and then aligning funding with the priorities as articulated by business and industry,” Barfield says. “To me, that’s the biggest thing we can do to impact the system, and it’s not even under my bailiwick.”

LEFT ALONE TO COPE with the problem, corridor firms in recent years have gotten creative about finding workers. Like Brian Harris Autoplex and Acadian Ambulance, many have gone recruiting in Michigan, Ohio and other parts of the country with high unemployment. Others have started providing their own training.

“The better businesses aren’t waiting for government to get it together,” Barfield says. “They’ve become much more aggressive about recruiting people ⎯ some from competitors; others see opportunity in the recession in other parts of the country. I also see a lot of people taking training into their own hands or looking for ways to get more out of their current employees.”

Help may be on the way.

It’s a refrain Louisiana business and industry has heard before ⎯ like 11 years ago, when then-Gov. Mike Foster revamped the Department of Labor and tried to consolidate job-training programs. That initiative, however, focused largely on federally funded worker training programs and never delivered the interagency coordination necessary to make education and other services accessible.

This time will be different, the Jindal administration insists.

“This administration as well as the legislature understands that this is a real problem that is affecting our quality of life, the business climate of the state, and that it’s hurting economic growth and causing people who love Louisiana and want to live in Louisiana to move elsewhere,” May says. “It’s front-and-center with business and industry, both companies wanting to locate here and companies wanting to expand here. People are recognizing that the world has changed and we haven’t changed to the degree that other states have.”

A comprehensive strategy on the table (see sidebar, next page) calls for an extensive restructuring of the workforce support system in Louisiana, from the Louisiana Department of Labor to the 18 regional workforce investment boards. A Workforce Investment Council led by leaders from key industries will advise the necessary agencies on labor demands.

Nearly $22 million is set aside to address the community and technical college issue. That includes $10 million for a training fund to pay for high-demand, high-cost programs, $3 million for a Fast Start program to address immediate needs of new and expanding businesses, $4 million for dual enrollment that lets high-school students earn credit for college courses and workforce training, and $4.5 million to promote technical training in middle and high schools.

The bond commission also recently approved $173 million to fund 23 capital outlay projects at 14 community and technical colleges around the state, many of which were built in the 1970s with 1970s-era labor needs in mind.

LCTCS is looking for additional funding to establish four centers of excellence ⎯ one in marine manufacturing to train workers for the shipbuilding industry; one in cyber security technology to prepare for the planned Barksdale Air Force Base Cyber Command and Cyber Innovations Center; one in energy production technology, including natural gas gasification; and one in emergency preparedness, response and recovery.

“If we do not dramatically transform the way we train our high school graduates, the gap between the skills of our workforce and the work will widen and cripple our economy,” Jindal says. “More Louisiana families will continue to leave our state in search of opportunities to pursue their dreams. That changes, starting now.”

A noble effort, to be sure. But the real question is whether the Jindal strategy will do the job. Is $10 million, for example, really enough to pay for those high-cost, high-demand programs so badly needed?

Whether it is or not, May says it’s still “a giant leap forward for the state. If I had more, I’d certainly know where I could use it. But this is a huge difference.”

Top 10 fixes

Here’s a look at Gov. Bobby Jindal’s comprehensive strategy for tackling Louisiana’s labor shortage.

Force the Board of Regents to consider workforce needs and true program costs when funding the Louisiana Community & Technical College System.

Offer employers a Day One Guarantee that promises workers with LCTCS training will meet job performance standards or be retrained for free. Establish centers of excellence focused on key industries to help accomplish this.

$10 million will pay for a standing training fund for high-demand, high-cost training programs at LCTCS.

$3 million will establish the Fast Start program so Louisiana Economic Development and LCTCS can provide customized workforce training for business expansion and recruitment prospects.

A state-level Workforce Investment Council—made up mostly of business leaders from key industries —will identify labor market demands and advise other agencies.

Local Workforce Investment Boards will be led by business leaders and encouraged to become one-stop centers for job training, employer information and child care.

The Department of Labor becomes a Louisiana Workforce Commission charged with integrating the state’s entire labor development system.

$4.5 million will better educate

high-school students about vocational education and training.

$4 million will pay for high school students to earn credit for college courses and workforce training.

Launch a national marketing campaign to recruit job-ready workers from other states.