Nearly 290,000 new jobs will open in Idaho over the next seven years. That’s from a study released Wednesday by Georgetown University’s Center for Education and the Workforce.
Here are some highlights of Georgetown’s predictions for 2020:
- 867,000 total jobs, a 22 percent expansion from 2010 (national average, 17 percent)
- 289,000 new job openings. 158,000 newly created and 131,000 from retirement.
- Fastest growing industries: education services followed by finance and insurance.
- Fastest growing occupations: healthcare support, healthcare professional and technical positions, community services and the arts.
- Blue color jobs will see modest (14 percent) growth with no growth projected for construction.
- Government will continue to be the industry with the largest employment at approximately 109,000 jobs.
- Highest ‘stock of employment’ in sales and office support at 226,000 jobs.
Perhaps the most significant number in the report for Idaho is the prediction that 68 percent of all jobs in the state will require formal education after high school by 2020. A few years ago, Georgetown researchers said 61 percent of Idaho jobs would require post high school education by 2018. That was below the national average.
In this new study, Idaho jumps above the national average. Report co-author Nicole Smith says Idaho’s need for education is growing faster than most states.
“But certainly not faster than the District of Columbia, Minnesota, Colorado, Massachusetts and North Dakota,” Smith says.
What’s happening in those states and Idaho is just an accelerated version of what’s happening nationally; the jobs growing fastest require formal training after high school.
Idaho relied heavily on Georgetown’s previous prediction to set its goal for young workers to get post high school education. Tom Luna is Idaho’s schools’ superintendent and a member of the State Board of Education. He says the board will likely take this new study just as seriously.
“It’s realistic to think that the goal we have set will change and be updated going forward,” Luna says. “What I know is we have a goal of 60 percent by 2020 and we have a long ways to go just to get to that goal.”
If Idaho doesn’t produce enough educated workers it might mean Georgetown’s new 68 percent prediction doesn’t come true. But Smith says it might not matter because economists aren’t sure how much jobs follow educated workers or educated workers follow jobs.
“If those jobs exist and Idaho does not have the capacity based on the educational attainment of its workforce to fill those jobs, then the jobs will go elsewhere or Idaho will have to rely on imports of workers from neighboring states,” Smith says.
A spokesperson for Idaho’s State Board of Education says there is no plan to revisit the goal in the near term.
Another organization that has relied heavily on Georgetown’s previous prediction is the J.A. and Katherine Albertson Foundation. A spokesperson for the charity, which focuses on education, says leaders won’t know if it will change advertising campaigns that cite the old study until they have had time to review the new one.
In an e-mail she writes:
“We welcome the Georgetown information. But regardless of whether the number is 61, 63 or 68, what we really need to focus on is that Idaho's post-secondary education attainment levels need to increase to suit a changing economy in Idaho and beyond.”
Copyright 2013 Boise State Public Radio