Kerry McKittrick: Transforming State Workforce Systems

Kerry McKittrick, Co-Director of The Harvard Project on Workforce, shares research conducted in partnership with the National Governors Association on how governors are reshaping workforce development to address labor force challenges. She identifies key trends including agency mergers, stakeholder engagement, dual-customer approaches, innovative funding, and investments in wraparound supports for underrepresented populations. McKittrick highlights how states focus on industry partnerships in emerging sectors and emphasizes the importance of data-informed regional strategies. She explains how successful pilot programs using governor's reserve funds can lead to permanent state policies, offering practical guidance for practitioners to adapt research insights to local contexts. Julian Alssid:  Welcome to Work Forces. I'm Julian Alssid. Kaitlin LeMoine: And I'm Kaitlin LeMoine, and we speak with the innovators who shape the future of work and learning.  Julian Alssid: Together, we unpack the complex elements of workforce and career preparation and offer practical solutions that can be scaled and sustained. Kaitlin LeMoine: Work Forces is supported by Lumina Foundation. Lumina is an independent, private foundation in Indianapolis that is committed to making opportunities for learning beyond high school available to all. Let's dive in.  You know Julian, when we talk about and use the term workforce development, it can sound like we're talking about one system, but really it's an interconnected web, like set of systems. It's not just one thing.  Julian Alssid: A web is a good way to put it. You've got education and training programs, employer needs, government policies, economic data, new technologies and people seeking to advance their careers. So all these different pieces, and they're all influencing each other, you can't really address one without thinking about the others. Kaitlin LeMoine: Yeah, exactly. It requires so much collaboration. Educators need to talk to employers. Policy makers need to listen to communities. And it's not just a top down function either. It's you need to you need input from the people going through the trainings and the workers trying to navigate their careers as well. Julian Alssid: Which is why I'm excited that we're talking with Kerry McKittrick today from the Harvard Project on Workforce. Kerry is helping to make sense of the work happening across these interconnected systems. Kaitlin LeMoine: The Harvard Project on Workforce is an interdisciplinary applied research project between the Harvard Kennedy School, the Harvard Business School and the Harvard Graduate School of Education that examines workforce development and the future of work from these various vantage points. In Kerry's role as co-director, she leads the project's policy, research, and partnership strategy, and spearheads initiatives focused on building better pathways to economic mobility. She has co-authored multiple papers focused on education, training and career navigation, and she speaks regularly about issues at the intersection of education and work. Julian Alssid: And prior to joining The Project on Workforce, Kerry was a senior manager at Jobs for the Future and served as a senior policy advisor on education workforce, civil rights and child welfare policy for Congressman Jim Langevin. She started her career in politics serving as a campaign manager for Massachusetts State Rep Ken Gordon. Thanks so much for joining us today. Kerry.  Kerry McKittrick: Thanks for having me. I'm a big fan of the podcast and excited to chat. Kaitlin LeMoine: We're excited to connect and chat with you today as well, Kerry. Thanks so much for joining us here. So as we jump in today, can you please tell us a bit more about your background and your role at The Project on Workforce? Kerry McKittrick: Absolutely. So I come from a political policy background, and it was actually through that work, through working with a congressman from Rhode Island, Jim Langevin, who really was interested in career and technical education, that my eyes were kind of opened to the workforce development and career and technical education world. And you know, I found it really interesting, because unlike many policy areas, it's pretty bipartisan. We were able to find some great agreements across Democratic sides and Republican sides and between employers and educators. Everyone sort of agreed that this type of approach was extremely necessary to both fill what was called at the time, you know, the skills gap, but also expand equity and so, you know, I did that work in Washington, got a little bit tired, as you may imagine. My, you know, my, my heart goes out to all the folks still doing this work. It's really amazing in Washington. But wanted to kind of dig deeper into the broader ecosystem. And as you were saying, really understand all of the different players and their roles and their unique levers for driving economic mobility. So I was fortunate to work at Jobs for the Future and now at The Project on Workforce. I'm thrilled to sit at the intersection of all of these players and try to make research accessible. So often I feel like research is on one side and practitioners are kind of on the other, and so it's important to ground the practice conversation in the evidence. And really, our mission is to build better pathways to economic mobility for workers and learners who haven't been served well by our systems in the past, and so we advance research on, you know, education and workforce transitions. We focus on the role of community colleges and regional economic development, the, I would say, role of career navigation supportsin economic advancement and workforce policy and education policy about the state and federal levels.  Julian Alssid: So Kerry, so you do indeed sit in the in the middle of it all, and which is, which is great, and your research coming out of the center has been out of the project has been quite, quite amazing. As we seek to remain kind of current on the, you know, on the future of work and learning, what are some of the trends you're seeing, and tell us about some of your most research and related findings.  Kerry McKittrick: I think that's a great question, because things are shifting pretty rapidly beneath our feet. And, you know, it's, it's a complex, complicated time to be doing this work. I think one of the things we're focused on at the project is really shifting workforce policy at the state level. And you know, we recently released a report focused on the role of governors in shaping workforce development systems, and we focused on governors because they have a unique position, both under the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act from the federal level, as well as over the states agencies which we know workforce touches everything from education systems to economic development systems to child care and transportation, all of these issues are really interconnected, and governors have a unique ability to bridge those gaps, and so we wanted to understand, because there is a lack of research on this topic and on what states are doing at the workforce level. Wanted to understand what governors were focused on, what were their priorities, what are some of their strategies and processes that they're deploying as they try to address low labor force participation. And I call that out, because when we were interviewing governor's workforce advisors to do this research, 60% discussed low labor force participation as a key driving factor that was contributing to their workforce development strategy. And so I can go a little bit deeper, but I'll highlight five trends that we saw at the state level. The first is that organizational structures are shifting across states. So we're seeing, in a lot of cases, agencies being merged, whether that's education and workforce agencies or workforce and economic development, we're seeing new stakeholder driven engagement, stakeholder driven approaches to WIOA planning. So we asked about, you know, some of the Workforce Opportunity Act, I think the listeners know we owe is the acronym for that. But in many cases, you know, these are resource intensive processes, but states are really engaging with stakeholders and understanding both, both with employers, with industry associations, to really understand the challenges that they're facing. And then the third piece was this dual customer approach to workforce development, so serving both employers and individuals, both job seekers and job holders. And so I think you know, balancing that, that support between quality jobs and job demand, is something that came up in our interview, 75% of folks mentioned this is the tension they were addressing. And then the last two trends are really trying to address some of the challenges with WIOA funding, federal funding in general, coming up with creative approaches, using governor's reserve funds in innovative ways. And then the last is, you know, really investing in targeted training towards youth, towards underrepresented populations, like justice involved folks, and investing in wraparound supports. So 60% of the folks we talked to mentioned childcare as a really important component of a workforce development strategy, particularly in the wake of COVID, folks, we're seeing, you know, so many caregivers leaving the workforce. And right now, the challenge in many states is how to bring people back, and how to adopt this sort of whole of life, whole of government perspective, to workforce development.  Julian Alssid: So that's, that's a lot. It's a very, very you're what you're seeing. So it's very comprehensive, very systemic. It's, it's, it's great to know that states are moving in these directions. Are there priorities that are standing out among the kind of array of shifts you're seeing that cut across states, yeah. Kerry McKittrick: Yeah, that's a great point. I would say the industry partnerships really focusing on key sectors at the time that we were doing these interviews, which was during 2024 from April through December, folks were really focused on clean energy. They were focused on semiconductor manufacturing. A lot of these industries that actually were being targeted by the Biden administration for industrial policy. So we're seeing that states are really investing in industry as partners, in some cases, providing incentives for folks to hire underserved populations. In other cases, building, you know, kind of customized training programs. In other cases, this is a extremely, I think, promising practice, providing business navigators, so a point of contact for a business to help navigate the workforce system, which is not easy to do. So I think there are a lot of exciting, promising practices out there, and focusing on this drill customer approach is certainly something we're seeing become more of a trend. Kaitlin LeMoine: Yeah, that makes so much sense. I'm wondering. Kerry, going back to one of the first things you said around the priorities you had mentioned, or the five trends, rather, you had mentioned agencies that are merging. And I was just curious to hear a little bit more about that. What are some of you know, kind of, what are you seeing merge, and what are the reasons for it, for those mergers to be occurring? Kerry McKittrick: So in some states, there's been efforts to merge education departments and workforce development departments. And in part, this makes it slightly easier to braid funding. So there are a lot of, you know, obstacles to braiding Perkins or education funding and workforce funding. But because workforce funds are so low, and we could have an hours on conversation about that, there's, you know, really a need to kind of be creative and berating funds. So that's kind of one piece. The other reason we saw was trying to build workforce pipelines that start at the youth level. So starting in K-12, with career and technical education, moving through community colleges up to workforce and community colleges starting to serve a real kind of integral role as upskilling institutions for their communities. So an effort to build these pipelines, one in four of the states we talked to mentioned youth apprenticeships as a priority. So merging these agencies helps folks to really improve the coordination across the board. And then I would say the other piece, the other emerging that we were seeing was, and this wasn't across the board, right? This was just, you know, several states was economic development or commerce with workforce, and this allowed for more business services to be integrated with workforce services, and a few of those that I just mentioned, but we're seeing, you know, one of the trends that I've observed is really the use of workforce policy as business engagement policy. Because businesses, you know, it's, it's far more than just, perhaps the tax incentive for moving to a specific area. It's really incentivizing workforce support and workforce investment, because this is what businesses need to and it's also helping states grow. Kaitlin LeMoine: Yeah, well, and it's interesting to think, you know, to kind of hear these are the different ways that really, these different players are almost de siloing their efforts, right? Like, like you're saying about building that pipeline, what does it look like to build a an education and economic development pipeline, kind of like, K on up, right? Like, let's, let's start at the very beginning, and and all work together, kind of throughout and across these systems. So that's that's exciting to to hear you're seeing as, like, kind of an emerging trend in this space. Kerry McKittrick: Exactly. And I think another thing I'd add to that is career exploration becoming a bigger trend, especially at the youth level, and understanding that, you know, many people might not know what a career in semiconductor manufacturing is, I think I still don't. So for young people you know, to really have the opportunity to explore, to figure out, you know, this is something that could leverage my talents. This could be something I want to do. Is an effective and kind of exciting way to go, I would say, you know, one of the other things I would add around this career navigation and career support piece is the need for more career coaches. So in addition to the child's care, the child care trend, half of states mentioned career navigation or career coaching as a priority, both at the youth level but also at the adult level. But there's an acknowledgement that there's a massive shortage of coaches, and then the funding for for these support services is also pretty low.  Kaitlin LeMoine: Yeah. I mean, I think we've seen in our work, like, it's almost like, there are all these new there's there's new industry, sub-industries within industries, there are new jobs that it's like, what are these jobs? Right? Like you hear it, but then it's actually like, what do you. Do day-to-day. It seems, as you're saying, it just feels like there's so much work to be done around like further defining these new and emerging roles that you know maybe haven't been around that long, or have experienced really significant shifts in recent years.  Julian Alssid: So it sounds like it's kind of you're seeing different flavors or different accommodations around the country, and the way governors are tackling this and and I'm interested you're one of the things we've seen in the past with with some of the reforms you know, that involve collaboration among education, workforce and economic development actors, is that they kind of come and go with leaders and administrations. So what do you see states doing to kind of bake this work? You talked about some, you know, merging of agencies and that sort of thing. But even on, like, the highest sort of coordination level, like how who's who's leading this work for states. Kerry McKittrick: In part, because, you know, we did see some of the merging of agencies as a key lever that was implemented with new administrations. So it was something that governors could do right away. I think, you know, we did hear in our interviews that different transitions across administrations was difficult, particularly given, you know, usual funding silos. But you know, one thing that I think is interesting, one of the things we drilled down on was the use of Governor's reserve funds. So these are the governor set aside funds under the Workforce, Innovation Opportunity Act, and in some cases, so this, you know, is something from year to year that that could change. You know, states have their plans, but governors ideally have some flexibility and some discretion over where these funds go. In some cases, you know, folks actually said, Oh, well, it's been decided by the administration before us. It's it's hard for us to use this as a priority. In other cases, you know, it was used to backfill administration costs. But what I want to highlight here, which I think is interesting is that there was a case in there are certain cases in which people are using these funds to test ideas that are then that that, once they prove the efficacy, can then be signed into law and funded at the state levels. So I want to, and I think that's a really interesting way of continuing it post, you know, post a certain administration. So an example of this is Washington state. So the governor launched an initiative called economic security for all, which provided, using the governor's reserve funds, which provided wraparound supports and financial assistance for folks just above the WIOA threshold, income threshold. It did that for four years. Studied it found massive wage gains and had huge success. And because of that, the state signed it into law and added state appropriations to fund it. So this was able to kind of continue past the administration, which I think is a really promising use for those funds when they're available. I mean, again, you know, the small funding levels continue to be a challenge, especially for small states, who still have to maintain the data systems right, who still have to administer a lot of these, you know, these practices, but don't have as much funding as a larger state does, just based on the formula.  Kaitlin LeMoine: So building on that, that last comment, certainly, you know this, the small dollars, I guess we would say, is maybe one of the challenges here, but based on on, you know, your research and findings, what do you see as some of the more the other challenges to address that states are addressing or working to address around the effective use of WIOA dollars and other workforce funding dollars as well. Kerry McKittrick: Yeah, I think, you know, lack of good data and information is a real challenge. Folks are, you know, investing in data systems, there's a great you know, data, quality data, workforce quality fund through workforce innovation, and many states are investing in state longitudinal data systems. So there's progress there, but this is still a place where we could use a lot of investment and a lot of improvement. We've done some analysis of state WIOA websites, this was a few years ago, and found that many of them, the most of them, didn't have clear outcomes data on earnings or completion rate or employment after a training program. So not only does this, you know, harm an individual who's trying to use WIOA services to upskill, but it also is makes it difficult for states that are trying to direct resources or allocate resources strategically. So I think we need a lot more investment in data systems so we can understand what works and provide information for, you know, job seekers, so they can make the decisions that are right for them.  Julian Alssid: So Kerry, you know, I know you're you say you're a regular listener, and we do appreciate that. And as you know, one of the questions we like to ask all of our guests is, you know, what are your recommendations for how our audience can become forces in applying? You know, in your case, your research findings to policy and program designs.  Kerry McKittrick: You know, I often say that my worst nightmare is our research sits on a shelf and no one uses it or looks at it. So I appreciate any opportunity to tell people to go to our website and look at our research. But in all seriousness, I think that grounding conversations at the regional level in data and evidence is crucial. You know, I think a lot of conversations that are happening are more anecdotal, like, oh, we know this employer has a shortage, or we're hearing that people may be like this program, or these jobs may be in demand. I would encourage folks to use our research, use some of our data, tools like the Workforce Almanac, which maps out the workforce sector different providers across the country, to actually start these conversations between employers, policy makers and educators at a common place say, okay, you know this is not the the end of the discussion. The data isn't the end of the discussion, but it's the start, and it allows us to, you know, kind of not base our strategies and our practices on assumptions what we might think is happening, but really to look at a common ground of this is what we're actually seeing. So using real time labor market information, you know, these are the job postings that are in demand, or using our research on some of the best practices around college to Job pipeline, to say workforce or work based learning programs have the strongest evidence behind them, let's use that as a starting point to Bridge our partnerships, to realize and to integrate some of the best practices. But again, these are regional conversations. This is very place based work, right? And so, you know, hopefully these are tools, but we don't think these are, you know, necessarily the answers. There's a lot more work to do, a lot more research questions out there that we need to answer, but hopefully it's a good start in the right direction.  Kaitlin LeMoine: Yeah, absolutely. I think that that is such a key piece of this work, right? It's like, what, how can we draw from best practices and, like, common processes that seem to work really well, and then at what point do you say, okay, but what's happening locally, regionally, and what does that mean for, like, what we actually do on the ground right? And it's, I feel like it's a really, it's a complicated balancing act of trying to learn from what's working well in different areas, but then also saying, Well, what's, what's unique to this region and where are what, what strengths should we leverage, right or build upon? It feels like it's, I don't know if you were finding that in your research at all. But I feel like that's just like, just living in this work. I feel like that's one thing that's always like, top of mind for us. It's like, how can you, like, you know, take what's best, a best practice, but also really apply it in a localized way that makes sense for wherever you're working? Kerry McKittrick: Absolutely. You know, we've done some research on community colleges, as I mentioned at the beginning, and their role in their ecosystems, and we specifically looked in one project on how they were using data, real time, labor market data, to drive some of their their programs. And we found that while that was a great tool and it was a great starting point, it actually didn't provide all the answers. And so having conversation, validating and supplementing that data with conversations with employers was just as crucial. And so I absolutely think you're right there. You know differences a job that may be in demand in one area is not in another area, right? It's so regionally specific, a challenge of out migration in one area may not be the same in another right different industries require different types of services. So that's where we've tried to kind of pull out some of these shining examples and some of the best practices. Hopefully in our research we, you know, we hope institutions or states can look at it and say, oh, there's an example that maybe applies to my my situation or my context, and that I can, you know, use I can see a small state, you know, a state like Wyoming is not going to have the same sort of workforce context as California or New York, but perhaps they can look to another State and say, I can learn from that one. And so there's a lot of that that we try to do too. I think the quantitative data is great, but the qualitative data is equally important. And looking at the case studies and really what works for different contexts is crucial. Julian Alssid: Well. And Kerry, you know, you said it a couple. Level of times. I think the the notion of the data as a starting point for discussion is so key. And even then looking at other examples around the country, and, you know, it's all kind of this iterative process that goes straight back to the dual customer approach. And you just kind of have to keep, you know, testing and test the test, test the numbers, test the hypotheses, iterate, you know, etc, and then the economies keep changing, and demographics keep shifting. So it's, it really is this kind of ongoing, you know, living, breathing, kind of organism, this workforce system. Kerry McKittrick: Absolutely, I think, and the labor market changes faster often than the system does, which is certainly a challenge, particularly, I think, for education systems, for trainers, keeping up the labor market is a challenge, particularly today, with all of these kind of technological advancements. And generative AI is changing things faster than you know, I think we would expect, and there's just a lot of unknowns out there, and so being responsive, continuing those relationships in a meaningful way, think is crucial. Sometimes it's easy to say, oh, develop a partnership. Well, what does that look like? What does that mean? Right? Like, what, what is a good kind of communication and cadence? So I think that's where learning from other examples is, is especially crucial. Julian Alssid: Absolutely so. So Kerry, as we, as we wind down our discussion, how can learners learn more and to continue to follow your work, Kerry McKittrick: We have a newsletter. Please sign up for our newsletter on our website. I promise we won't inundate you every week. Um, we send it out when we have new releases, and follow us on LinkedIn. We, we try to, you know, blast out a lot of our research and other research that we may not be doing, but that we may see folks from other centers, you know, finding the latest data on generative AI the other day, we, we posted research for several researchers, but including one of our faculty directors, actually, Rafaella Sadun, on the use of Generative AI as a team member. So in addition to our own reports, we have all sorts of, you know, in our our own ecosystem, all sorts of things we're trying to highlight, and then we also highlight events. So we'll have different webinar series where we'll bring in folks and talk about our latest research or some of their work. And you know, again, we try to bring in folks from across the ecosystem, so from employers to researchers to educators and policy makers. So I encourage everyone to stay up to date, because we are busy. It certainly sounds that way based on today's conversation, and we will definitely continue to follow your work and really appreciate you joining us for this conversation today. Kerry: Thanks for having me. It was fun.  Julian Alssid: Thanks, Kerry.  Kaitlin LeMoine: That's all we have for you today. Thank you for listening to Work Forces. We hope that you take away nuggets that you can use in your own work. Thank you to our sponsor, Lumina Foundation. We're also grateful to our wonderful producer, Dustin Ramsdell. You can listen to future episodes at workforces, dot info or on Apple, Amazon and Spotify. Please Subscribe, Like and share the podcast with your colleagues and friends.