As state leaders promote recent business deals and try to fill a significant number of job vacancies in both the public and private sector, a big question keeps popping up: where are West Virginia’s workers?
Just 55% of working-age people in the state have a job or are looking for one, a labor force participation rate below the national average. Of the people who aren’t working, it’s often a long-term situation. One study found a large chunk of them are so-called “detached workers” who still aren’t working years after seeking some form of state employment help.
The issue has persisted for decades, and several things make it worse: a significant number of state residents are aging out of the workforce or have disabilities and West Virginia’s declining population. Inconsistent and limited access to broadband and a lack of affordable and quality housing have also had an impact.
Advocates and state leaders like Workforce West Virginia Executive Director Jeff Green say the exact solutions for building up the state’s workforce are still being figured out, and that a larger survey of West Virginians not in the workforce would reveal what is pushing people out or keeping them from working in the first place.
“That’s really what we need,” Green told lawmakers this month. “It helps us and guides us in terms of initiatives and how we need to tailor our efforts to reach individuals and get them back in the workforce.”
But there are steps state leaders can take to remove multiple barriers to employment so people can find jobs that meet their basic needs and enable a good quality of life. Here are six things experts say could serve as a start.
Unions and wages: Creating a more worker-friendly environment
State leaders continue to tout West Virginia’s pro-business status to lure companies. But some advocates say the state hasn’t done as much to be friendly to workers.
In 2016, West Virginia became the 26th state to enact a “right-to-work” law, a measure that allows union members to opt out of paying dues and other fees. The law was upheld in 2020 after a judge’s decision to strike down parts of it was overturned by the state Supreme Court.
West Virginia AFL-CIO president Josh Sword says that the law has had a negative effect on local unions and will hurt workers’ long-term ability to organize and advocate for better benefits; research from left-leaning groups like the Economic Policy Institute have found that employee wages are lower in states with “right-to-work” laws. Sword supports repealing the measure, as Michigan lawmakers did last year.
In recent years, Democrats in the state Legislature have also supported raising the state’s minimum wage, which has been stuck at $8.75 an hour since 2016. A new attempt in the House of Delegates this year, HB 4534, would raise that wage to $10.00 an hour in the fall of 2024, and increase a dollar per hour until hitting $15.00 an hour in 2029. But the bill only has one sponsor and has yet to be heard by a committee.
Increasing access to job skill trainings, apprenticeships and education — especially for youth
One of the bigger problems West Virginia faces is that young people have been leaving in a “brain drain” of potential workers.
The issue is sparking calls to invest in and retain younger West Virginians by helping them see a future in the state. The Charleston-based Tuesday Morning Group, a collective of community leaders and local activists, has created a list of recommendations for youth workforce development that includes building more support for at-risk youth, helping middle and high school students create career plans, and creating a youth summer job initiative.
But beyond supporting younger workers, advocates also argue that there should be a broader rethinking of what qualifications matter for jobs, and state officials could take the lead. Alex Weld, executive director of Generation West Virginia, said that one extremely helpful change at the state level would be adopting “skills-based hiring,” a practice that focuses less on a person’s education and more on the exact skills of applicants. She noted this is already happening to some degree in some state agencies.
But beyond supporting younger workers, advocates also argue that there should be a broader rethinking of what qualifications matter for jobs, and state officials could take the lead. Alex Weld, executive director of Generation West Virginia, said that one extremely helpful change at the state level would be adopting “skills-based hiring,” a practice that focuses less on a person’s education and more on the exact skills of applicants.
But the state has stopped short of the executive orders and legislation that has been adopted elsewhere. Several states are starting to embrace the concept, following the lead of Maryland, which became the first state to remove degree requirements for state jobs in 2022.
Pulling people on public assistance away from the “benefits cliff”
Financial support can be a big deal for people on “safety net” programs like Medicaid, SNAP, or disability assistance. But many of these programs come with a catch: to keep receiving benefits, workers can’t make a lot of money or have to work a limited number of hours.
Getting a higher paying job can push someone off of the “benefits cliff”: a situation where someone is dropped from assistance for making too much, but they aren’t actually making enough to support their family without it. And the cliff can emerge quickly, in some cases, wage increases as little as $0.50 an hour are enough to push someone off.
Advocates say this is a particularly big issue in West Virginia, where many residents qualify for some form of assistance, and deters people from finding jobs.
The benefits cliff “becomes a hindrance when you’re asking folks to get back into the workforce,” said Ashley Shaw, a workforce and professional development coordinator at Marshall Health. “And considering inflation rates, it’s not much of an incentive to pursue a career.”
Because several federal assistance programs are administered by states, lawmakers have the ability to keep people from falling off the cliff’s edge. Since 2021, more than a dozen states have enacted at least one policy that would help people remain financially stable as they transition off of public assistance, including higher eligibility cutoffs, tax credits, and more flexible work requirements.
Helping people in recovery or navigating reentry
People recovering from substance use often face some of the highest barriers to entering the workforce. Some of this is due to stigma; there is a perception that workers navigating these hurdles won’t make good employees. And in West Virginia, a wave of proposed state policies that punish people for drug use or other offenses would only make this problem worse.
But there can be other factors at play as well. Shaw, who leads Marshall’s CORE program, an initiative for people in recovery, their families, and other West Virginians with high barriers to workforce participation, notes that in addition to needing mental health support and treatment, people can also have a hard time finding transportation and job training.
Similar problems can also impact people exiting the criminal justice system, who often have to navigate a complex set of obstacles after being convicted or incarcerated, and can struggle to find employers willing to give them a second chance.
That issue is encouraging some state legislators to look into creating new supports.This week, a House committee advanced HB 4229, a reintroduced version of the “Ban the Box Act” that would keep some public employers from asking job applicants about criminal records until later in the hiring process.
And Sen. Laura Chapman, R-Ohio, has introduced two bills this session that would help with reentry: SB 405 would create a “jobs to reentry” program that would allow some incarcerated people to train for state positions before their release. And SB 493, which recently passed the Senate Workforce Committee, would support the professional licensing of some people with criminal records, so long as the person is not applying for a license directly related to their conviction.
Chapman said in an interview that the bills are meant to “give everybody the options of doing good once they are released from prison,” along with helping the state fill job vacancies.
Making child care more accessible — and affordable
West Virginia is a child care desert: there are nearly 26,000 children who need child care but can’t get it.
The issue is driving some businesses in the state to develop their own child care programs to help employees or lobby for increased state support.
“If we can help businesses create child care systems, that will provide more opportunity so that people who want to work can get back into the workforce,” Steve Roberts, president of the West Virginia Chamber of Commerce, said in a recent interview with Mountain State Spotlight.
Lawmakers have responded by introducing bills to create child care tax credits for parents or businesses. But some lawmakers say that these proposals to reimburse people for care after the fact don’t address the root problems of the issue and that more legislative action will be needed even if these credits pass.
“The tax credits, I of course support that, but that doesn’t help if there’s a child care desert and you don’t have child care to put your kid in,” said Chapman, who is cosponsoring a state child and child care tax credit bill this year. In 2023, she sponsored a different bill that changed how child care providers were reimbursed by the state, addressing a big concern of local child care providers worried about the end of pandemic-era child care subsidies.
That bill, SB 437, was not placed on a committee agenda during the 2023 session.
Incentivizing transportation access
Another big issue is transportation because West Virginia is so rural and spread out, people often need a vehicle to get to work. If they can’t find one, keeping a job becomes a lot more difficult.
But the issue is also one of the toughest to solve. Creating more public transportation, which is already difficult to operate in more rural parts of the state, wouldn’t necessarily help workers who need to get around when buses aren’t running. Plus, people who do work at the right times of day may struggle to get to bus stops located far from their homes or job locations. Carpools and rideshares could help, but they still require that at least some people will have access to a car.
Even so, some state programs, like Jobs and Hope, have supported paid ridesharing as a partial solution to the state’s transportation issues. As the state figures out a deeper fix, advocates say that it could also support already-active transportation assistance programs, or incentivize larger employers to provide transportation for workers.
Correction 2/6/24: This story has been corrected to make clear that some West Virginia state agencies — those under the Division of Personnel — are already implementing “skills-based hiring” for some positions.