'New jobs need new skills'When it comes to work force literacy, a high school diploma isn’t the golden ticket it used to be. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 26 of America’s 30 fastest-growing job categories require some type of post-high school education or training. Within the next decade, the U.S. will be short 12 million workers who have obtained this level of education, according to the National Council of State Directors of Adult Education. Jennifer Maloney, director of the National Coalition for Literacy, said the nation faces shortages of those workers because the vast majority of its work force isn’t made up of recent high school and college graduates. It’s made up of people who’ve already been in the work force for years. “The people who make up our county’s workforce have not changed, but the jobs that make up our economy have,” Maloney said, “and these new jobs need new skills we need to teach the work force we already have.” A 2007 study completed by the National Endowment of the Arts found employers identify lack of skills in written communication as the most common employee deficiency. Employers also cite reading comprehension as a common deficiency among employees. Jeanne Van Lengen-Taylor, a GED and literacy teacher at Columbia’s Adult Learning Center, estimates more than half of her students fill the center’s seats because their jobs require them to complete their GED or increase reading, writing and communication skills. Three years ago, such students made up a fraction of the center's student population. “Now people aren’t even going to be making a paycheck if they don’t function at least at a high school literacy level,” Van Lengen-Taylor said. John McClure, director of the center, added that especially now, as the work force gets socked with more and more layoffs, the number of working-age adults trekking back to school to get a diploma keeps growing. He anticipates jobs that don’t require a high school education won’t bounce back once the economy does. “Even manual labor jobs are automated now,” he said, adding that program instructions, safety manuals and button panels are reading requirements increasingly common in manufacturing and other manual labor jobs. Tia Broadus and Sue Thomson are determined not to get swept up in the tidal wave of statistics. They’re currently GED students in Van Lengen-Taylor’s class and know the value of literacy and education and the benefits both offer. “If you can’t read, you don’t have a chance in hell of passing that test (GED), let alone getting a good job in this economy,” Thomson said. “It’s all multiple choice and word problems.”
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