The workforce of tomorrow: what will Indiana employers need from the worker of the future?

• Author: McKimmie, Kathy
• Position: Workforce Development

What will Indiana's TV employers need from workers to remain competitive in the future? "They're saying that their whole approach to production is changing to more advanced technology," says Graham Toft, senior fellow for the Center for Competitiveness at the Hudson Institute, Indianapolis. "As they invest in plant and equipment they expect higher skills of workers. They might hold the same title, but the skills are ramped up."

Toft breaks those necessary skills into three groups: technical skills with computers and electronics; social skills, including the ability to work in teams; and life skills. The last one includes the familiar "work ethic" requirement of getting to work on time and a commitment to excellence, but he adds a new life skill--the desire to continually learn. In the old economy, regardless of the education track of workers, "by age 20 to 25 we were done," he says. Now workers are constantly expected to learn, relearn and unlearn.

Indiana will remain a major manufacturing state in the future, says Toft, with good jobs, but there won't be as many. "Indiana's biggest workforce challenge is creating more jobs that demand higher skills," he says. "It's not the supply side. Our wages per job have been declining for 50 years. Indiana has 6 percent fewer jobs in the workforce that pay over $20 an hour than the national average. The biggest challenge is an economic development challenge."

"We're still feeling the effects of the recession," says Patrick Barkey, director of economic and policy studies for the college of business at Ball State University. "We're almost starting our fourth year in Indiana. That's the big story." Unfortunately, he says, the state's long-term economic concerns that existed before the recession will still be there after. Those include a production-oriented economy with a low-cost production edge that's less and less relevant.

It's what goes on inside the factory that matters, says Barkey. High-paying jobs require a high degree of adaptability from workers, Take the Muncie-based Keihin Aircon North America plant, which assembles air conditioners for Honda, as an example. "They make two different products on the same line in the same day. They can adapt that fast." The key is specialization in production.

IS COMMUNITY COLLEGE THE ANSWER?

"The economy is moving both ends against the middle," says Barkey, with the highest- and lowest-paying jobs accounting for all the job growth. With his advocacy hat on he...