BOSTON — Gov. Maura Healey is renewing a push to ease the state’s post-pandemic workforce crunch with a new plan to attract and retain workers for health care, education and other key industries struggling to fill vacancies.
On Monday, Healey unveiled a new five-year workforce development plan — which her administration has submitted to the U.S. Department of Labor and Department of Education for approval — that will serve as a “roadmap” for boosting the beleaguered workforce and improving the state’s economy.
“Our goal is to have the most competitive economy in the world — one that solves the world’s greatest challenges and problems while providing opportunities for all of our residents,” Healey said in remarks on Monday. “We must also set the goal of having the best workforce. We have the people, the leaders and the talent.”
To do that, Healey said the plan focuses on tapping the state’s “under-served” workforce including low-skilled workers, minorities and new immigrants with work authorization, with expanded recruitment, training and retention programs.
“By helping them we can also meet the needs of employers large and small in industries statewide,” she said. “And in everything we do we’re going to measure the results — to make sure this work has a real impact in our state.”
A key plank of the plan calls for a new “stipend initiative” for low-income workers to “incentivize enrollment, completion and employment and reduce barriers to training and employment.” It wasn’t clear how much the plan would cost.
Lauren Jones, the state’s Labor and Workforce Development Secretary, said the plan includes strategies to close the skills gap “and bring discouraged and disconnected people far too often left on the sidelines back into the labor market to build a robust talent pool for employers.”
A recent survey of private employers by the National Federation of Independent Businesses found that 37% of small business owners in Massachusetts had job openings they couldn’t fill in February, while 35% have raised pay to lure workers back into the labor force and fill open positions.
Business leaders say the reasons behind the worker shortage are complicated, but it has long-term implications in hard-hit industries like health care and early education.
Many suggest the dynamic is more of a churn in the labor force as the pool of available workers looks for advancement and higher-paying jobs.
Some workers are permanently leaving the labor force, and others are moving around between positions to get better pay, benefits and other hiring perks.
For employers, the hiring crunch means having to provide more incentives such as signing bonuses and competitive pay to attract new candidates.
In Massachusetts, the rising wages come as Beacon Hill lawmakers weigh a controversial proposal to increase the state’s minimum wage from $15 to $20 per hour, which business leaders strongly oppose.
Massachusetts has one of the highest state minimum wages in the nation, which rose to $15 per hour in January under a 2018 “grand bargain” agreement between lawmakers, worker advocates and the business community. The wage has increased nearly every year since 2014, when it was $8 an hour.
Backers of higher wages say workers are still struggling to make ends meet in Massachusetts, where the overall cost of living remains higher than many other states in the Northeast.
But the state’s business community says additional wage hikes will put the squeeze on employers, prompting belt-tightening, layoffs and ultimately higher prices for consumers.
A recent NFIB report estimated that raising the state’s wage floor to $20 per hour would cost 23,000 jobs — or 0.5% of the state’s employment base — many of them among small businesses.
“Labor, health care, and energy costs all continue to rise for small businesses, so lawmakers on Beacon Hill must do no harm and not exacerbate the state’s affordability problem by making it even more expensive to operate a Main Street business,” Chris Carlozzi, NFIB’s Massachusetts state director.
“Unfortunately, Massachusetts lawmakers continue to offer proposals that would raise costs for small businesses and working families and impose burdensome mandates.”
Christian M. Wade covers the Massachusetts Statehouse for North of Boston Media Group’s newspapers and websites. Email him at cwade@cnhinews.com.