Indiana Skills2Compete Coalition Reports
Educational Attainment Among Hoosier Adults: Challenges and Opportunities for Persistence and Completion
 2023
The vision for Next Level Jobs says it all: “Two million Hoosiers need additional training to compete in the 21st Century workforce, and there will be over 1 million job openings in Indiana due to retirements and the creation of new jobs by 2025.”
Employers need trained workers now.
Helping adults access and persist in post-secondary education and training has to be a bigger part of the solution. Two million Hoosier adults could benefit from additional training now, but they have real barriers to being successful.
Sector Strategies in Indiana: A Summary of Efforts
 2014
There are at least 21 sector partnerships either organized or “under construction” in Indiana. So far these partnerships are on the right track; they have started getting the right people around the table, they are thinking about sustainability, and they are focused on the industries that are the economic drivers of their communities.
There are some areas in which they could go farther. Many, if not most, of Indiana’s partnerships are currently organized in a way that is more program–oriented, rather than “problem-oriented.” In many cases, they are also using a narrow definition of the key stakeholders who belong at the table.
The state must think through how it might define its own sector strategies as well as how it might support and incentivize regional sector partnerships across the state.
This report outlines the policy recommendations that are key to getting started.
Indiana's Forgotten Middle-Skill Jobs: 2013
An Updated Look at Employment and Education Patterns in Indiana
 This report finds that middle-skill jobs remain essential to Indiana’s economy, and that half of Indiana’s job openings through 2020 will be middle-skill jobs.
Yet, the data also suggests that Indiana may not have enough middle-skill workers to meet this demand. While 54 percent of all jobs in Indiana are classified as middle-skill, only 47 percent of Hoosiers likely have the skills and credentials for these jobs. This also raises concerns that the state may not realize its full long-term growth and competitiveness in the global marketplace.
The report also finds that nearly 2/3 of Indiana’s workforce in 2025 were already adults in 2010, suggesting that focusing skills training on high school students will yield only limited success. The conclusion from the report is that the Skills Gap is a full-grown problem that requires an ‘Adult’ solution.
Other key findings include:
- the state could expect more than 550,000 openings in middle-skill jobs between 2010 and 2020
- while high-skill and low-skill education attainment are expected to decline between 2010 and 2025, middle-skill attainment gains will be modest, suggesting there will likely not be enough workers trained at the middle-skill level to fill demand.
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