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BizTalk 390: Keeping an eye on Wichita's workforce - Wichita Business Journal
I wanted to get the perspective of Keith Lawing on this week's BizTalk with the Wichita Business Journal podcast, getting his thoughts on how headline after headline in Wichita's aerospace industry is affecting the workforce and the all-important supply chain that creates so many south-central Kansas jobs.
But we talked about much more, including how his Workforce Alliance of South Central Kansas continues to evolve in helping job-seekers find work, and companies find the right job candidates.
"If you just look at the organization, you think job-seekers are the primary customer and that's really not the case," Lawing said. "It's businesses. We have to understand businesses to understand need of business and industry, especially the largest employment sectors in our region."
The Workforce Alliance keeps a close eye on aerospace manufacturing, Wichita's bread-and-butter employment sector. The industry can sway between times when there aren't enough quality candidates to fill roles, to times like now when production slowdowns at Spirit AeroSystems create hardships like furloughs that impact hundreds.
Lawing and I talked about more than aerospace manufacturing. We spent a good amount of time talking about two significant challenges to Wichita's workforce that aren't intertwined but continue to keep workers at home: child care, as well as adults who have been incarcerated but are looking for a second chance in the workforce.
Finding child care, and affordable child care, is probably the No. 1 challenge facing the most south-central Kansans. We all have friends, neighbors or co-workers who have had to make the tough decision of whether to have both spouses in the workforce, or keep one at home and lose the income but not have to pay the rising cost of daycare — when openings can even be found.
"There's no easy fix to this, and there's not going to be," Lawing said.
He noted that women in the workforce numbered about 37% in the 1960s, but that number increased to 60% over 30 years and it's still there. So more child care spots are needed, and the jobs in those centers are requiring more trained and skilled workers.
It's a problem not going away.
My thanks to Lawing for joining me to talk workforce. Over 19 years, he's seen just about all challenges and successes with Wichita employment, and the current aerospace manufacturing teetering will be worth following in 2025.
Thanks, as well, to Equity Bank for sponsoring BizTalk since Day 1 in 2017. Visit our BizTalk podcast hub for past episodes, and be sure to contact me if you have an idea for a good BizTalk guest.