By 2025, Savannah won't have enough people to fill jobs, study says. What can be done?
Joseph Schwartzburt, Savannah Morning News
Updated 5 min read
A bridge connects the wielding and paint shop Work is underway on the final assembly facility at the Hyundai Metaplant America in Ellabell, Georgia on Wednesday, October25, 2023.
At the Savannah Economic Development Authority (SEDA) board meeting on Tuesday, President and CEO Trip Tollison delivered some sobering news: the supply of workers in Bryan, Bulloch, Chatham and Effingham counties is not sufficient to fill the estimated 15,000 jobs coming to the region by 2025.
According to SEDA's Workforce Study, conducted by Wadley Donovan Gutshaw Consulting, the four-county region that makes up the Savannah Joint Development Authority (JDA) has a tight supply of workers to fill manufacturing, warehouse and health care jobs ― many of which are driven by the Hyundia Metaplant and its allied suppliers. While the report states the current supply of unemployed workers could cover growing needs through 2024, “by 2025, this resource is largely depleted.” To meet that need, according to the report, the region would need to recruit workers from other areas of the country such as Illinois, New York, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Florida.
Tollison expressed that some of the information might be surprising to people while other aspects should not be. Of the reports less-than-positive findings he said, “We just felt like the best thing to do is put it out there and deal with it.”
Aviation continuing education at Savannah Tech.[special photo from Savannah Technical College].
Key takeaway from SEDA study: Integrate education and industry
Coastal Georgia's unemployment rate, according to Georgia Dept. of Labor (GDOL) statistics, has hovered around 3% most of 2023. The most recent Economic Monitor Report from Georgia Southern University showed that job losses in the service sector of the local economy were picked up in business and professional sectors, which underscores one of the key findings of SEDA's workforce study that competitive pay and enhancing employee retention have and will become increasingly important.
Although the report articulated the Savannah region's workforce strengths, it laid bare the deficits, especially in preparing high school graduates and military retirees for the technical and production roles that comprise the employment landscape. The report indicated local employers needed to develop stronger ties with area school districts and local colleges and universities. The new report verified and amplified the JDA's own Workforce Development Plan, released in September.
During the course of the Wadley Donovan Gutshaw study, SEDA had 22 companies from focus groups along with 40 other employers complete a 93-question electronic survey. The third-party consultants conducted 19 in-person interviews, “from a cross-section of regional employers primarily focused on advanced manufacturing and logistics.” They also held 11 virtual meetings with more than 40 individual participants including representatives from economic development organizations, higher education, K-12 public school systems, county and municipal leaders as well as local staffing agencies.
Then, the consultants took Tollison and the other local economic development officials ― Bryan County's Anna Chafin, Bulloch County's Benjy Thompson, and the JDA's Director of Workforce Maria Whitfield ― along with the area's four public school superintendents on a trip to Bowling Green, Kentucky. Bowling Green has become a perennial model for tier-2 economic development in regard to attracting corporate facility investment.
Chafin noted how Bowling Green's school system most impressed her. Her biggest takeaway was the city had “a full integration of industry and education. I mean, they are hand-in-hand. And they've [Bowling Green] been doing that now for over 10 years.”
The example of Bowling Green’s industry collaborating with the school system underscored coastal SEDA’s own recommendations for a more strategic relationship between industry and the school systems in Chatham and neighboring counties.
Mark Burns, president Gulfstream, provides an update on the G400 (background) and G-700 during a special event on Tuesday, October 31, 2023 at Gulfstream's newest next-generation manufacturing facility.
Next steps for SEDA and its partners
One of the outcomes of the SEDA workforce report highlighted was the need for a, “principal coordinator to oversee workforce development plan design, implementation and management.” That role would oversee six new task forces, Tollison explained, that would address many challenges by aligning efforts across industries and sectors, including:
Military Resources
Underrepresented populations, such as minority groups, workers with disabilities, and "second-chance" hires like retirees or people re-entering the workforce
Housing
Education
Transportation
Regional marketing to attract new talent
Another element that the principal coordinator role would oversee is the Coastal Employers’ Forum, a name Tollison and other SEDA officials agreed they would prefer to change. The initiative, regardless of its moniker, would help “facilitate messaging for human resource (HR) guidelines relative to the region’s HR best practices for recruiting and retaining employees, address childcare as well as establish programs and initiatives that improve labor supply.”
Improved labor supply would also include the need to, as Tollison said, “find more people to move here to take these jobs.” Even if the region can align all its available workforce resources, that supply would still not be enough to address the long-term projected growth. Hence aspects of the plan aimed at recruiting workers from the aforementioned states.
Considering this coordinator position was one of eight bullets under the plan’s “Next Steps” section, there is a lot of work to do to determine the work that still needs to be done. A clearer plan of action should be made available at the next SEDA board meeting, slated for Dec. 12. Tollison said that even more information regarding specific steps that have been going on behind-the-scenes is forthcoming in January.
Tollison acknowledged that the challenge is a big one, but he’s optimistic. “Everybody in the United States seems to be suffering from a tight labor market. However, there aren't that many places in the United States that have the record amount of growth related to the industrial sector that's coming our way.”
Joseph Schwartzburt is the education and workforce development reporter for the Savannah Morning News. You can reach him at JSchwartzburt@gannett.com.
