For the existing workforce, the pandemic was a tumultuous force that created upheaval, uncertainty and doubt about the market. There were abrupt changes, work-from-home environments and a plethora of digital meetings. These changes, still being felt throughout the business world, offer a glimpse of the new normal employees are facing.
While these changes and challenges may be daunting for workers already in the economy, the next crop of workers are ready and waiting in the wings.
The Class of 2021 is mere weeks away from entering a chaotic workforce.
But instead of issuing doom and gloom proclamations to new graduates as many did during the 2008 Great Recession, local educators and experts are optimistic for their future.
“These students have been tested … more so than previous graduating classes,” said Joe Pickens, president of St. Johns River State College. “They’ve already had to adapt to some pretty drastic landscape changes especially for those students that were predominantly in face-to-face classes and had to switch online and did it successfully, or else they wouldn’t be graduating in a couple of weeks.”
And some of those experiences may actually stand the graduating class in good stead.
Workforce changes
Even though there was an abrupt shift to online-only classes, colleges and universities have been offering online classes for two decades. Pickens describes this class of students as the most technologically savvy yet to enter the workforce and said it will be a boon for employers.
Paul Fadil, a business management professor at the University of North Florida, echoed Pickens’ statements about the even greater importance technology is going to play during the recovery.“If it wasn’t for recent technological advancements, we wouldn’t be in a recession; it would be a full-blown depression,” Fadil said.
Because of the pandemic, he said, unique opportunities have presented themselves.
Fadil joked that his days of international flights and lectures are over because of Zoom and Microsoft’s Teams. The cost savings for digital meetings are undeniable.
That gives new graduates a leg up.
“This graduating class is more comfortable in a remote environment, even more so than an older millennial born in the early-to-mid 80s,” Fadil said.
He added that skills like self-starting and multitasking are hard to teach, but for those successful enough to graduate during the pandemic, those skills would have been a necessity.
A recent study by McKinsey & Co., a global management consultant, entitled ‘The Future of work after Covid-19’ found remote work is expected to boom.
Considering only remote work that can be done without a loss of productivity, McKinsey found that about 20 to 25 percent of the workforce could work from home between three and five days a week. This represents four to five times more remote work than before the pandemic and could prompt a large change in the geography of work, as individuals and companies shift out of large cities into suburbs and small cities, according to the report.
Jacksonville’s growth
Jacksonville is set to capture a large swath of this demographic as the workforce changes.
A recent joint study from Zillow and Yelp found that remote workers, dubbed ‘Digital Nomads,’ are flocking to Jacksonville, which the study said was such workers’ No. 1 destination. Nearly 11 million American workers describe themselves as digital nomads, an increase of 49% from 2019.
More broadly, the region is experiencing growth in all demographic sectors.
From 2017 to 2019, according to a recent study by Freddie Mac, Jacksonville saw an increase in the population of 3.6%, fifth-highest by percentage among large metropolitan areas, for a total of about 54,000 residents. The report notes the surrounding counties are also growing at an outsized pace. But the growth hasn’t stopped and appears to have accelerated over the previous two years according to population in-flow data from Zillow research.
As the country awaits the census data and decade-long projections, one thing is certain, Jacksonville will be among the fastest-growing cities yet again.
JaxUSA Partnership’s VP of Talent Development Anna Lebesch said the region is ready for the influx.
“We have an area that is growing and we have a wonderful quality of life here,” she said. “Because of things like the low tax situation for a new college grad, this is the perfect environment for them to look to start their career, but also continue and build this career in this region.”
Specifically, Lebesch said, she expects outsized growth for the financial services industry, logistics and transportation industries, manufacturing and information technology sectors to grow the most on the First Coast.
Employer benefits
The many benefits new employees have over existing employees notwithstanding, all agreed this class will share a common pitfall: A lack of face-to-face mentorships.
“New graduates just aren’t going to know what they are missing,” Pickens said about mentorships and networking events.
Lebesch agreed but stressed the importance of potential new hires to get accustomed to conducting job searches, mentor/mentee sessions and networking events online. She added that it could be the differential that sets a new worker apart from their counterparts.
But Fadil said he ultimately isn’t worried about the longer-term impacts. He said like everything right now, technology and flexibility are driving change.
While it might be more difficult in the short-term to network, but the ability to do quick meetings more frequently could build a stronger core to the mentor/mentee relationship.
Regardless, many experts are considerably more optimistic for the future of the workforce during this recession than the last. And as industries work through their myriad of problems created by the pandemic, at least one solution experts say is available: cheaper, flexible, self-starting new graduates.
“I think what employers are going to find out is that this particular set of graduates who have persevered and succeeded through whatever obstacles in the last year threw at them, they’re gonna find a resilient, adaptable and successful employee,” Pickens said. “These are success-oriented students. So I think that bodes well for them and for their employers.”