Olympia explores opening training center to address rising unemployment

Olympia’s Finance Committee has endorsed the advancement to the city council of an Economic Workforce Training Center during its meeting yesterday, March 17.

Approved by Finance Committee chair Councilmember Lisa Parshley and Councilmember Yến Huỳnh , the proposed training center would provide scholarships for training in construction, fiber infrastructure and the hospitality industries, among others. It would operate in partnership with the Thurston County Chamber and is proposed to launch with a budget of $575,000 of city funds.

“This is a step forward not only for our economic development team,” said Olympia Assistant City Manager Keith Stahley, “but it's also a step forward for our housing and homeless response team and we're getting a little bit more in a moment.”

If approved, the funds will cover 18 months of staffing along with the operation of the facility, to cover operations through Dec. 31, 2023.

The training center would become the fourth joint project between the city and the Thurston County Chamber of Commerce. The others include:

• Journey2Jobs, providing jobs training for transient community members
• Business Resiliency Training which gives businesses training on how to respond to the pandemic; and
• the Thurston Strong program.

Boomer Gap and the Great Resignation

The training center and the city’s other employment and skills programs aim to address the 3.2% unemployment rate in Thurston County, according to Thurston County Chamber President David Schaffert who spoke during the meeting.

Schaffert’s presentation reported that the number of working people over 55 years old who have retired has risen to 50% in 2020. The report also cited a Bureau of Labor Statistics study that said 4.5 million people quit their jobs in November last year.

A possible reason for the trend, explained Schaffert, could be the stress of the pandemic, with people reexamining their careers and older workers deciding to opt for early retirement.

“That workforce is going to be much tighter than what it has been in the past,” said Schaffert.

The rising demand for workers can be an opportunity for people who would otherwise have difficulty finding jobs to be employed, Schaffert remarked.

“You have a really good engaged audience right now, within the employer community,” explained Schaffert, “which lends itself to when you want to support people that may be houseless. You're looking for people that may be recovering from some sort of illness or addiction, and you're looking at people that just have not had success.”

“This is such a unique opportunity,” said Schaffert. “This is one of those moments in time where employers are willing and want to look at different strategies in developing their workforce.”