Author: Lily Wu, KWCH Anchor/Reporter
WICHITA, Kan. (KWCH) - There are jobs and training available for Kansans who are unemployed or looking for their next career move.
According to the KansasWorks.com website, there are more than 52,000 job postings today.
In the South Central Kansas region, there are 5,847 job postings. That region includes Butler, Cowley, Harper, Harvey, Kingman, Marion, McPherson, Reno, Sedgwick, and Sumner counties. In Wichita alone, there are 3,512 job openings.
“In the last several months, we’ve been lucky to see our unemployment rate decreasing. So, we know some individuals are going back to work. But we do have still the largest number of people in the state receiving unemployment. Our employment rate is still over 7-percent in Sedgwick County,” said Amanda Duncan, vice president of the Workforce Alliance of South Central Kansas.
There are returning adults who have chosen to go back to school to reskill or upskill.
“What we do here is hands-on. So obviously, that’s in our blood. We take a lot of pride in that. And, that’s how we have such high job placement rates and engagement with employers in the area,” said Andy McFayden, executive director for strategic communications for WSU Tech.
WSU Tech enrolled 4,607 students to this fall semester, which is a 4.2-percent decrease from last year. Despite the decline, fall 2020 remains the second largest fall enrollment in college history.
In a news release , the president of WSU Tech, Sheree Utash, said, “Having flat enrollment or being slightly down while faced with the challenges that the COVID-19 pandemic brought is really good news.”
She added, “We owe much of our enrollment success to our student services team who pivoted quickly in the spring to recruit in an online environment with innovation and technology to connect individually with our returning and incoming students. We can also contribute the success to a strong application year, the new First15 scholarship initiative for recent high school graduates and the federal dollars that are providing financial assistance to many of the unemployed individuals in our community. These fall enrollment numbers reflect great work in a variety of areas, including our faculty, who along with concentrated efforts on many fronts worked tirelessly to increase enrollment and retention during these unprecedented times.”
To learn more about training opportunities, go to the Get Trained Get Paid website, by clicking here.