By Rep. Kyle Hilbert
Evidence of a workforce shortage is everywhere. Placing an online order to finish Christmas shopping last week, I was notified the company could no longer give an exact shipping date due to workforce and supply chain issues. Unfortunately, this problem is bigger than possibly not getting a family member’s Christmas present delivered before Dec. 25.
This workforce shortage is affecting our health care, students in our classrooms and many other sectors of society. We must get a handle on this if we want to thrive and make Oklahoma the Top-Ten state we all believe it can become.
The Legislature can start by looking at three critical areas where shortages existed pre-pandemic: nursing, teaching and engineering.
Nursing goes without saying. Every person in this country is aware of the shortage and the challenges it has caused. During multiple spikes in the pandemic, there were Oklahoma hospitals that had physical bed space yet were unable to take additional patients because they lacked staff. The bright side is that based on public testimony at our American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) Health & Human Services hearings, we have enough students interested in nursing to address this shortage. We just don’t currently have the capacity at our postsecondary institutions to train them all.
Annually, Oklahoma is only graduating half as many students in our colleges of education as we have teachers retiring. This is according to a recent Legislative Office of Fiscal Transparency (LOFT) report. Simultaneously, only half of these graduates are staying in the profession more than five years. With our colleges of education graduates only meeting 25% of the demand five years post-graduation, our K-12 education system cannot possibly function without alternative and emergency certified teachers. It is imperative that we support alternative and emergency certified teachers while also increasing the number of education graduates.
Within the last decade the aerospace sector surpassed all but oil and gas to become the second largest industry in Oklahoma. This diversification of our state’s economy has been a goal of Oklahoma legislators for several generations now. However, the energy and aerospace industries – as well as many others – are going to have a difficult time growing in our state if we do not have adequate numbers of engineering graduates from Oklahoma universities. As a state we must to do a better job of not only increasing interest in STEM careers, but also of providing tutoring and others services so that all students with an interest and ability to be engineers have the tools necessary to get across the finish line.
There are certainly other shortage areas that could be addressed – IT jobs, plumbers, truck drivers, etc. – but tackling these first three is a good start. A quality healthcare workforce is essential to provide the quality of life necessary for our citizens. Without enough skilled K-12 educators to properly train the next generation, it makes addressing all other shortage areas all but impossible. Without enough engineers, our state will not be able to become the Top-Ten state we strive to be. These problems are not unique to Oklahoma, but that doesn’t mean we cannot come up with unique solutions to address them.
In closing, I will share a quote from my good friend Majority Floor Leader Jon Echols: “No one is dying because we don’t have enough political science graduates. But they are due to a lack of nurses.”
