Pennsylvania will face an acute shortage of educators and health care workers across all regions of the commonwealth in the next decade, according to credential gap data newly published by the state.
The information appears in a dashboard rolled out May 20 by the Pennsylvania State Board of Higher Education to increase transparency around the commonwealth’s postsecondary education pipeline and workforce needs.
“By providing a one-stop shop for this information, the board is for the first time providing the kind of concrete, common-sense information we need to celebrate our contributions and further support our colleges and universities as engines of economic prosperity,” Cynthia Shapira, who chairs the state board, said in a prepared statement.
The online dashboard presents information on student enrollment trends, the cost of higher education, graduation rates and workforce demand.
The worker pipeline data suggests the Keystone State will be short by more than 39,000 credentialed health care and human services employees in 10 years, according to the estimates.
Other takeaways from the data:
- Many of the needed health care worker jobs do not require four-year degrees. About 23,000 of these positions are for people with undergraduate certificates.
- The biggest bachelor’s degree shortfall is in the category of management and entrepreneurship, where there will be an estimated deficit of about 19,000 people.
- There’ll be a gap of nearly 19,000 education workers, most of them needing bachelor’s degrees or higher, the dashboard data shows.
- The need for educators and health care workers will span the state, according to the dashboard, which shows projected deficits in all 10 regions of the commonwealth.
