Ensuring a healthy and productive workforce is an essential component of community economic development. The term workforce development refers to a range of activities, policies, and programs used by a variety of partners to create, sustain, and retain a workforce that can support current and future business and industry.
Employers approach workforce development from an organizational perspective, focusing on the skills their business or industry needs to remain competitive in the marketplace. Community organizations and economic developers understand workforce development as part of an economic growth strategy that benefits a community or region. While educational institutions and social service providers organize workforce development programs focused on the economic security of the individual. As the federally-designated Economic Development District for Greater Philadelphia, DVRPC brings these interests together to facilitate regional economic prosperity for all communities.
Workforce Trends
Recent world events have expedited the advancement of digital technologies, altering where and how we work (telework), as well as, produce and distribute goods and services (automation). Growing Greater Philadelphia highlights how these trends may impact the region’s economic sectors and what types of policies and programs should be employed to sustain the regional workforce.
View the Comparing Regional Economies webpage to see the automation risk and telework capacity for jobs in Greater Philadelphia and compare our economic position to peer regions.
Telework
Increased telework capacity and opportunities mean that employers now have access to a national, or even global, talent pool. This also means that workers are no longer constrained by the job market in their city, or the housing market in the city in which their job is located. However, telework capacity is greater in some sectors of the economy than others, meaning some occupations are still tethered to the physical location of their job.
Automation
Routine jobs are at the greatest risk of losing their jobs, or having their job functions change, due to digitally-enabled automation and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. These jobs can be broken down into two categories: cognitive occupations, such as secretaries and customer service representatives; and manual or physical occupations, such as truck drivers and factory workers. Both types can be found throughout each economic sector in Greater Philadelphia at varying degrees. As a result, the workforces in some sectors are at greater risk of automation than others.
Industry Insights
Approaches to workforce and economic development planning and policy implementation should be context-specific. Focused research on regions and industries helps decision-makers understand, prepare for, and mitigate the ways in which various economic forces may lead to shifts and disruptions in the workforce.
Transportation and Warehousing Sector
Transportation and Warehousing is one of the nation’s and Greater Philadelphia’s fastest growing sectors, and this growth is projected to continue in the years ahead. However, despite this growth, the majority of the sector’s jobs are manual roles that tend to be low wage and score high in automation risk, indicating the potential for a large portion of the workforce to be displaced as digital technologies advance and continue to be adopted by employers.
The Delaware Valley Goods Movement Task Force hosted a panel discussion among industry experts on the influence that digital tools and technologies will have on the future of the goods movement workforce. In addition to the discussion, DVRPC staff shared highlights from a sector analysis and the recent Freight Futures scenario planning project. The event emphasized the need for reskilling and upskilling initiatives to ensure workers remain relevant and employable in this rapidly changing industry.
Recording of the Delaware Valley Goods Movement Task Force meeting and panel discussion.
Regional Transit Industry
Research indicates that approximately 50% of the transit industry’s workforce will retire over the coming years. Due to this demographic shift, demand for increasingly sophisticated skills, gaps in training, and industry perceptions, the transit industry needs to address these workforce and human capital issues that are critical to the continuing success of the industry.
What We Think We Learned [0.5 MB pdf] This report identifies 5 themes that are most concerning to transit and workforce development stakeholders. The report also serves as a reminder of the challenges the transit industry was facing pre-COVID-19 and will help transit industry leaders develop a path forward through recovery.
The Transit Workforce: A Path Forward [0.2 MB pdf] This plan was developed collaboratively with Temple University as a guide to addressing the systematic challenges facing Greater Philadelphia’s primary transit agencies: SEPTA, PATCO, and NJ Transit.