Bellwater State University economist Dr. Samuel Iyer released his fifth annual report on the region's skills gap Tuesday, finding that the shortfall between open technical jobs and qualified local applicants has narrowed for the second straight year, though Iyer warns the pace remains too slow to keep up with employer demand.
Iyer’s report estimates the region’s technical skills gap, defined as the difference between open positions requiring specialized biotech, green-energy or advanced manufacturing training and the number of qualified local applicants, at roughly 1,200 positions this year. That figure is down from about 1,450 last year and from a peak of nearly 2,100 three years ago, before the region’s community college and university training programs began significantly expanding capacity.
“This is the second consecutive year the gap has narrowed, and that’s genuinely good news,” Iyer said. “But I want to be careful about the framing. We are still telling roughly 1,200 employers a year that the region can’t yet give them the workers they need. That’s not a solved problem. That’s a smaller version of the same problem.”
Where the progress is coming from
Iyer credited the narrowing gap primarily to expanded training pipelines at Bellwater State University and Bellwater Community College, including a wind-turbine maintenance certificate program developed jointly with Bellwater Turbine Works and a new apprenticeship agreement between the university and the turbine manufacturer announced this year. He said the community college’s expanding green-energy manufacturing certificates at both its downtown and West Bellwater campuses have also meaningfully added qualified workers to the pipeline.
“Five years ago, if you’d asked me what would move this number, I would have said it would take a decade of coordinated investment,” Iyer said. “What actually moved it was several institutions independently deciding to build training pipelines tied directly to specific employers, rather than general-purpose technical degrees they hoped would eventually match up with job openings.”
Biotech’s gap is narrowing more slowly
The report finds the skills gap has narrowed fastest in green-energy manufacturing, where certificate programs can be completed in 12 to 18 months, compared with biotech, where many open positions still require four-year degrees or specialized lab training that takes longer to scale. Iyer’s report estimates the biotech sector alone still faces a shortfall of roughly 550 qualified workers, a figure that has declined more slowly even as companies like Kestrel Biologics and Ridgeline Therapeutics continue expanding their local workforces.
We are still telling roughly 1,200 employers a year that the region can’t yet give them the workers they need. That’s not a solved problem. That’s a smaller version of the same problem.
Dr. Samuel Iyer, Economist, Bellwater State University
A caution about counting on continued growth
Iyer’s report also includes a caution echoed elsewhere in recent coverage of the region’s biotech-driven budget growth: much of the skills-gap narrowing depends on continued expansion in sectors that could slow. “If biotech funding rounds or green-energy contracts hit a rough patch, employer demand could fall faster than we can adjust training pipelines in the other direction,” Iyer said. “A shrinking gap driven by rising supply is a much healthier trend than one caused by falling demand, and right now we’re seeing the healthier version. That could change.”
Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Theresa Nakamura, who was briefed on the report ahead of its public release, said local employers remain frustrated by hiring timelines even as the numbers improve. “A shrinking gap is progress, and I’ll take it,” Nakamura said. “But our members are still telling me they’re recruiting out of state for positions that, in a perfect world, would be filled by someone who grew up twenty minutes from their front door.”
Iyer said his office will publish the full report, including sector-by-sector breakdowns, on the university’s economics department website within the week. He said next year’s report will include, for the first time, a projection estimating how quickly the gap could close if current training-pipeline investments continue at their present pace, a figure he declined to preview but described as “encouraging, with an asterisk.”
A methodology built on employer surveys
Iyer said the report’s figures are drawn from a combination of state labor data and an annual survey of roughly 140 regional employers in biotech, green-energy manufacturing and advanced manufacturing, a methodology he has refined each year since the report’s first edition. He acknowledged the survey-based approach has limitations, noting that employer-reported vacancy figures can be imprecise and that some companies may over- or under-report openings depending on their current hiring strategy.
“I’d rather be transparent about the methodology’s limits than pretend this is a perfectly precise number,” Iyer said. “What matters more than the exact figure is the trend line, and the trend line has now pointed in the right direction for two consecutive years using the same methodology both times.”
What employers want to see next
Rosalind Kemp, vice president of workforce development at Bellwater Turbine Works, said her company’s own experience tracks with Iyer’s broader findings, crediting the region’s growing apprenticeship pipelines with narrowing but not closing the gap her company still faces. “We’re filling positions faster than we were three years ago,” Kemp said. “We’re still not filling them fast enough to avoid recruiting out of state some months. Iyer’s numbers match what I see on our own hiring dashboard every week.”
Iyer said he plans to expand next year’s employer survey to include more biotech firms specifically, given that sector’s slower-narrowing gap, in hopes of identifying which specific bottlenecks, whether lab space, faculty capacity or licensing timelines, are most responsible for biotech’s comparatively sluggish progress relative to green-energy manufacturing.