Across the country, a transformation is happening right before our eyes. As artificial intelligence shifts the way we learn and work, it’s bringing new opportunities for technology and advanced manufacturing industry hubs such as Pittsburgh.
Those booming sectors need a pipeline of skilled talent to sustain and scale for decades to come. But at the same time, we know just six in 10 Gen Z learners believe school is preparing them for their future work. That disconnect between today’s education and tomorrow’s workforce is an issue for learners, employers and for growing regional economies like Pittsburgh.
As the public workforce development board for Allegheny County and the city of Pittsburgh, Partner4Work serves both people looking for jobs and businesses trying to hire them. We spend a lot of time listening to employers share challenges, describe obstacles affecting their workforce and highlight what is helping them succeed.
The needs of each business vary, but one message cuts across industries: Too many young workers simply do not know about the jobs Pittsburgh employers have to offer.
Many open positions provide competitive wages, benefits and opportunities to advance, yet local employers struggle to generate interest in them. The problem is not a lack of ambition among young people. It is an information gap that struggles to connect young people with the education and skilled training they need to the careers and well-paying job openings available.
Through its work with communities across the country, Catalyze, a collaborative funding initiative that has awarded over $22 million since 2021 to accelerate innovation in career-connected learning, sees the same disconnect between young people and the career opportunities available to them. This shared perspective guides our work together in Pittsburgh: Young people need earlier and more meaningful exposure to the careers they could pursue.
Employers understandably devote most of their attention to positions that need to be filled immediately. But when a business begins engaging people only after posting a job, it enters the talent-development process too late. Today’s hiring challenge might have started years earlier, when a student never learned the career existed in the first place. As new industries and occupations emerge in our region, this challenge gets steeper.
Starting sooner
To meet Pittsburgh’s growing workforce needs, career awareness must begin sooner, and our region must build talent pipelines earlier and more intentionally.
Before young people can imagine themselves in a career, they need the opportunity to see what that career looks like. Young people are more likely to pursue careers they can see, understand and imagine themselves in. Information security analysts, robotics technicians and laboratory technicians are helping shape the future of Southwestern Pennsylvania, but many students have limited opportunities to learn what these jobs involve or how to prepare for them. These careers can offer competitive wages, benefits and opportunities to advance. Yet employers across our region struggle to find qualified people with the skills these positions require.
That is not a failure of ambition. It is a failure of exposure. Most young people have simply never been introduced to these occupations, never seen the work up close and never had a chance to connect their own interests and strengths to them.Research conducted by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development found that nearly half of teenagers who expressed a career expectation selected one of only 10 jobs, even as technology and employer needs continue to change.
This disconnect is particularly important in Southwestern Pennsylvania, where robotics, artificial intelligence, advanced manufacturing and biotechnology are reshaping work. Young people cannot prepare for opportunities they do not see. If they never encounter a career while choosing courses, building skills and imagining their futures, employers cannot expect a strong pipeline to appear later.
Connecting learning to work
Career-connected learning can help close the gap. Career-connected learning introduces young people to career paths through a range of experiences including exploration, skill development, relationships with industry professionals, employer projects, job shadowing, internships and “learn and earn” programs. It helps students connect what they learn in the classroom to the world of work around them, test their interests and understand the steps needed to enter a field.
Done well, career-connected learning gives students meaningful experience, stronger professional relationships and a clearer sense of direction. It also gives employers an earlier, more intentional role in developing their future workforce.
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Investing in local innovation
Southwestern Pennsylvania has an opportunity to put this approach into action on a larger scale.
Catalyze Pittsburgh, a collaboration between the national Catalyze initiative, the Richard King Mellon Foundation and Partner4Work, is investing $1.5 million in innovative, early-stage career-connected learning ideas.
The challenge will support efforts that help young people ages 11 to 18 in Allegheny, Armstrong, Beaver, Butler, Washington and Westmoreland counties explore careers in emerging industries and occupations. Catalyze Pittsburgh is specifically seeking new approaches, not simply expansions of programs already underway.
This investment builds on a growing recognition that career preparation and academic progress belong together. Pennsylvania already recognizes the value of career-connected and work-based learning in preparing high school students for what comes next. Under Act 158, students have multiple pathways to meet statewide graduation requirements. Depending on a student’s pathway and local school requirements, experiences such as pre-apprenticeships, internships, externships and cooperative education can serve as evidence that students are prepared to continue their education, enter training or begin a career after graduation.
Organizations with bold ideas can help lead this work and should visit the Catalyze Pittsburgh Challenge page to review the application guide and submit an application by Oct. 30. Employers should also consider how they can help co-design experiences, identify the skills and occupations young people need to understand, and open their workplaces to the next generation.
We cannot solve every workforce shortage overnight, nor can we do it alone. But together, we can get ahead of it. The first step in filling tomorrow’s jobs is not posting them. It is helping young people see themselves in them.
Rob Cherry is CEO of Partner4Work. Michelle Cheang is director of Catalyze.