Wichita Falls work force experiences a strange phenomenon

The employment picture in Wichita Falls is experiencing a phenomenon that the new Chamber of Commerce president thinks must be fixed. Even though the unemployment rate is low – 3.6 percent in October -- a lot of jobs are still going unfilled and a lot of people are not working.

“We’ve got a whole segment of society that is not career and work focused, and we’ve got to get a better understanding of what it takes to engage those folks,” said Ron Kitchens, who took the top chamber job Nov. 28.

Kitchens said Wichita Falls is typical of what’s happening in a lot of communities.

“That’s a whole new American phenomenon of the workforce participation rate,” he said.

Figures from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce illustrate the phenomenon. A total of 3.3 million workers have simply left the American workforce since 2020. The nation has about 10 million job openings but only about six million unemployed workers. Reasons for what has been called “The Great Resignation” range from post-pandemic health concerns to lack of child care to a blizzard of retirements in the pandemic to people being fed up with pay and working conditions.

That phenomenon is most evident in young men.

“Young men have decided en masse just to not go to college anymore and not enter the workforce,” Kitchens said.

While COVID-19 disrupted employment across that country, Kitchens doesn’t blame the problem entirely on that.

“This was going on before COVID,” he said.

The challenge to Wichita Falls will be to motivate people to go to work – and to have jobs available for them.

“We’ve got to find employment and education that stirs their passion and gets people back into the workforce and back to being productive for our community,” the new chamber boss said.

Kitchens said Wichita Falls offers job opportunities, but community leaders must be attuned to what those opportunities are.

“Ask people, what are your needs and wants and desires and how do we help you achieve those to get you back into the workforce?” he said.

Kitchens thinks the city must work with the educational community to train people for the future as well as the present. He pointed to a study that found 70 percent of present employment skills will be irrelevant five years from now.

“If you’re not constantly changing and adapting then you just don’t have a prayer,” he said. “Most people don’t have time to think about that. They’re spending their time trying to feed their kids and their families and pay their mortgage.”

Kitchen said the community must focus on two areas. One is activating the people who aren’t working and the other is to get more people to move to Wichita Falls for employment.

“First and foremost, we want to grow the industries that are here and I think there’s tremendous opportunity in that,” he said.

He believes any new businesses that come to town will likely be smaller employers because the area does not have the population to provide enough workers for large ones.

“We’re not going to see 2,000 jobs announcements as an Austin might,” he said.

A recent Chamber of Commerce study showed Wichita Falls has heavy employment in government and health care jobs compared to manufacturing firms that bring new dollars to the community. October figures show about 22,000 for the former compared to about 5,000 for the latter. While Sheppard Air Force Base is a government employer, Kitchens sees it as having a broader benefit.

“We want to continue to focus heavily on supporting and growing the base and the operations there. What makes that different than typical governmental employment is the military brings and transfers a lot of their people and their staffing with them, so it’s a way to grow population as well as the employment base,” he said. "Those places that are thriving are those places that get people to move there."

This article originally appeared on Wichita Falls Times Record News: Wichita Falls workforce experiences a strange phenomenon