Demand remains high for workers, healthcare openings lead way

North Dakota is in great need of workers, a situation that will continue to grow over the next 10 years, according to Phil Davis, head of Job Service North Dakota. 

At the Governor’s Workforce Summit on Sept. 23, Davis detailed that 38 of the state’s 53 counties have shortages when it comes to filling open positions, with healthcare, education, hotel and food service among the most difficult openings to fill. 

The situation is particularly acute in the healthcare field. 

By 2034, the state will need around 3,700 more healthcare practitioners and technicians, and another 2,600 medical support workers. 

Additionally, large local projects will need workers across the state, whether for construction of projects or staffing a facility like the pig iron facility that will be built in Minot, Davis said.

“(The) 600 individuals in Minot we’re going to need for the pig iron facility,” Davis said. “We don’t have 600 people sitting in the workforce center ready to go to work, I’ll tell you that much.” 

Job Service ND currently lists 12,435 open jobs, which amount to around 85% of all job openings across the state, Davis said. 

Job Service ND assists job seekers by providing a centralized hub for employment opportunities, training and unemployment insurance services, 

Healthcare currently has the most openings, with 3,700 needed workers, followed by transportation with 1,000 openings, along with sales, office and management, which all have needs for more than 700 workers each across the state. 

Davis indicated that a drop in the number of available international workers, the increased number of retirements and the fact that many high school-age students choose not to work have led to a decrease of around 1,400 workers in the labor force over the past year. 

“I don’t know of any other way to put this, but we’ve kind of taken a little bit of a beating with our international migration and the new federal rules that have come down from the Trump administration,” Davis said. 

While there are currently around 9,300 people unemployed in the state, or 2.2% of the labor force, Davis said only around 1,600 are on unemployment insurance. 

Around 7.1% of workers in the state also hold multiple jobs, a rate higher than the national average of 5.4%. 

New department aims to streamline efforts 

Gov. Kelly Armstrong will ask legislators to support the creation of a Department of Workforce Development once they convene in January in an effort to combine all workforce-related programs under one umbrella, Armstrong announced at the Workforce Summit. 

Armstrong named Katie Ralston Howe, director of the Department. of Commerce’s workforce development arm, as head of the future department. If approved by the Legislature, the department would go live on July 1 next year. 

Armstrong said the current workforce system is scattered and fragmented and that the new department would fold together current functions without adding or reducing staff. 

“By aligning programs and appointing a cabinet-level workforce commissioner to coordinate their efforts, we can better meet the needs of the state’s workers and businesses while also achieving long-term cost savings and operational efficiencies,” Armstrong said during an annual Workforce Summit held at Bismarck State College on Sept. 23. 

The new department would house Job Service North Dakota and also absorb Adult Education from the Department of Public Instruction and Vocational Rehabilitation and the Office of Refugee Resettlement from the Department of Health and Human Services. 

Current staffing across the entities folded into the department amounts to around 300. 

The realignment came out of discussions last year within the Armstrong administration that concluded a unified workforce system was needed in the face of headwinds related to reduced federal and state funding. 

The department will also take over strategy and growth of state apprenticeship programs that could partner with industry, Ralston Howe said.