Over the course of a four-hour meeting at City Hall on Tuesday, the 119K Commission along with panelists, industry experts, and mayors from around the state talked through the state’s workforce development problems, and how to reconnect the 119,000 disconnected youth to education and the economy.
Connecting the tens of thousands of disaffected Connecticut young people with some of the nearly same number of open jobs in the state will require a radical rethinking by employers when it comes to hiring, a trio of business representatives said during a Tuesday panel discussion.
The state has an invisible youth crisis. That's what a report by Dalio Education calls it. Last year they found 119,000 young adults in Connecticut are at risk or disconnected from education and employment. That's a fifth of people ages 14 to 26. The study also found one in three high school students is at risk of not graduating on time. Tonight lawmakers brought educators and students together to discuss what's behind the issues and the challenges young people face. Senator Chris Murphy said he wants to bring ideas back to Washington D.C.
A commission aimed at identifying and breaching the barriers preventing Connecticut youths from succeeding academically and vocationally will host the last of its series of state-wide public forums in New London on Tuesday.