Transcript 0:00 [gentle music] Consider how your business might evolve, because if you don't keep thinking about it, it's going to be stagnant, and if it's stagnant, what's gonna happen? It's going to disappear. 0:11 This can include appealing to the workers and how they work. What is the culture? It can include mentoring programs from the old to the young to the middle-aged. It doesn't matter. 0:23 It can include involving them, encouraging, simply talking to people about the benefits of working in the transportation industry. That's what we're talking about today, simply transportation. 0:41 [upbeat music] Welcome to The Peggy Smedley Show, your voice for our connected world, with your host, Peggy Smedley. Hello, listeners, and welcome to today's edition of The Peggy Smedley Show. 0:56 I'm your host, Peggy Smedley. Today on the show, I'm talking all about our workforce in transportation. If you joined me last week on the show, I was talking all about the state of transportation in the United States. 1:09 We know the pandemic produced fast changes in transportation, supply, demand, and performance. 1:15 We know many modes of transportation were down in the early days of the pandemic, but now it is picking up again, which is good news, and areas like logistics in particular are really surging. 1:29 So for today's show, I wanna look at one very specific challenge facing the transportation sector, and that's our workforce. 1:37 Now, many sectors and many industries are struggling with workforce, but I really wanna dig into this specifically. 1:44 Today, we will dig into the numbers to get a good sense of where we are today, and I will share my thoughts about what needs to happen next and how technology, as always, might factor in. 1:56 So stick around for the entire discussion. But let's talk about who I will have on the show today. I will be talking with Subburap Banidhia. 2:04 He is the assistant professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Louisville. 2:10 We'll be talking about work being done on digital twin-based industrial Internet of Things and mixed reality-based immersive applications on the IIoT. 2:21 Join us for that conversation, and that centers on the interdisciplinary research at the university. So it's gonna be an interesting conversation there. 2:29 And then I'm gonna wrap up the show with Danielle Boffmann, who's the president of ProShare Services. 2:35 We will discuss making a change from working from a large corporation to starting her own business, and she's gonna share one of the biggest challenges women face in the energy and oil and gas industry, and her favorite piece of advice as a mentor and what she learned along the way. 2:51 And I love the oil and gas industry, because that's one of the very first industries I ever got my jumpstart in. So, uh, stick around for that discussion. I know we've got a lot to talk about. So let's get started. 3:02 Let's start by looking at the recent numbers from the Bureau of Transportation. The unemployment rate in the US transportation sector was 4.5% in December of 2022. 3:15 Now, that was above the December 2021 level of 3.6%, and both were above the pre-pandemic level of almost 3% in December of 2019. 3:27 So let's think about these numbers, because I think always when you look at the data, they're very revealing, and I always wanna share numbers because they present a very telling story. 3:38 So to be fair, unemployment in the transportation sector reached its highest level during the COVID pandemic when we look at it in May 2020 and July of 2020 at a whopping 15.7%, and now think about that. 3:53 The transportation sector unemployment almost seems to be above overall unemployment. 3:59 The BLS reports the unemployment rate, not seasonally adjusted, in December 2022 was almost 3.3%, which is a 1.2 percentage points below the transportation sector rate. Now, that's a mouthful, right? 4:16 Now, the BLS does break down these trends a little bit deeper, which I wanna share with you right now. 4:21 Industries within the transportation and warehousing sector show different patterns of unemployment or employment rate because they face different economic environments and require different mixes of job skills and occupations. 4:37 Warehousing and storage, the largest sub-sector, employs the most workers. 4:43 Some of these workers directly operate motor vehicles while others work in supportive roles, which that makes sense, 'cause we have lots of different peoples working in different areas. 4:53 But current statistics provide two ways to measure unemployment in transportation: the first in unemployment in the transportation and warehousing sector, the second is unemployment in transportation and material moving occupations. 5:07 Now, the BLS suggests when looking at transportation and material moving occupations, women tend to experience a higher unemployment rate than men. 5:16 Now, that difference appears to be less within the transportation and warehousing sector. 5:22 All in all, within the transportation sector, 7 out of 11 industries expanded their labor force between the years of 2020 and 2021. Now, we're trying to look at these numbers and dig even deeper. 5:36 The warehousing and storage areas saw the largest increase in employment, followed by couriers and messengers, or messenging, kind of messengers who travel around transportation. 5:48 On the other hand, taxi and limousine service and employment saw the largest decline, so the biggest dip overall, followed by water transportation. 5:59 So among all industries, the trucking industry employed the largest number-Of transportation workers. 6:07 But if you've heard me say it so many times, this is an industry that struggled to find workers, even though it also is the largest increase of workers. 6:17 Now, I'm gonna come back to that point again because I think it's worth diving into more. Also, the inter-urban and rural bus transportation industry employed the fewest transportation workers. 6:28 So it's also interesting to note almost one quarter of all transportation workers in 2021 are over, what? The age of 55, and nearly half of the workers in transit are over the age of 55. 6:42 So let that sink in for a minute, because I think it's worth kinda noting what's happening here. Many of those working in transportation and warehousing sector are near retirement. 6:53 16% of those working on our pipelines, 20% of those working on our rail, 25% of those working on our water, and 26% working in the air. 7:06 Nearly 30% working on trucks, again, are all nearing retirement. Think about that. Almost all of those are, are near or above 20% right now. So those folks are all over the age of 55. 55. 7:24 I spoke about this many times, and I'll speak about it again. We need to address this worker shortage that is very rapidly approaching, that is very rapidly nearing retirement. 7:36 We need new young minds, I guess, to enter the transportation industry. We need that Gen Z, we need millennials, we need all these different generations that are going to be in these leadership roles. We need them all. 7:49 We need them to understand the value of these careers. 7:52 We need to inspire them to consider careers in transportation, and we're not making the proper case for the need for encouragement in these careers, in these industries. 8:04 So clearly, we are not speaking to these generations that inspire them to want a career in transportation. So it kinda raises the question, are we failing them? 8:16 So here's my opinion for today, and I want everybody to listen to this and to maybe have this sink in. We need to address this in transportation as well as other industries, 'cause it's not just one industry. 8:29 I think this is a problem for many. We need to encourage the younger workers to consider careers in transportation. 8:37 We need to equip them to use their talents and their tech savvy prowess to create innovation in transportation. We need to explain what career path they need to take in school. Maybe this is the bigger problem. 8:52 They don't know what is the career path they need to be taking to want to even want a career in transportation. 8:59 We need to explain the classes they need to study and courses that make sense for them to move up the corporate ladder. Maybe this is the disconnect. I've said this before. It's a matter of national security. 9:14 Our transportation systems keep this country humming, right? Keeps it moving along. Without them operating properly, our country will be unsecure, will not be as secure as we all want it. 9:28 We might be saying the air system was not hacked by when the infrastructure clearly is maybe outdated. Whatever the problem, there clearly is a major problem, but we need young minds to help secure our future. 9:42 We need those young minds to look at what the problem was. We need mentors. We need the right minds to figure the problem out. 9:50 We need to innovate and protect our transportation systems, just like all of these systems that keep our systems moving. 9:58 We need to help out and figure out what we're going to do to make all of our goods and services moving along. We saw that, uh, good opportunities in transportation are required. 10:09 We need companies to be driving this change in the transportation industry to keep it moving steadily. We need to encourage executives to be understanding the new worker and how they work and how they think. 10:24 Maybe that's the bigger problem. We're not taking the time to understand the culture. We need to be working together to create a culture of inclusion in the transportation industry. 10:34 When we hear the word culture, do we understand what it means? Are we listening so they understand their needs for a culture and environment? 10:43 Quite simply, we need to work differently from how we've worked in the past, and I'm not sure we're understanding what this new innovation means for the workers of today, tomorrow, and into the future. 10:57 And that's gonna be critical if we want a safe country. So here's my tip for today. 11:04 Consider how your businesses might evolve today, whether it's transportation, manufacturing, logistics, food, whatever, agriculture, whatever industry. 11:15 We need that transportation because everything is required to make things move from the supply chain. It's all together. 11:24 Consider how your business might evolve, because if you don't keep thinking about it, it's going to be stagnant, and if it's stagnant, what's gonna happen? It's going to disappear. 11:34 This can include appealing to the workers and how they work. What is the culture? It can include mentoring programs from the old to the young to the middle-aged. It doesn't matter. 11:46 It can include involving them, encouraging, simply talking to people about the benefits of working in the transportation industry. That's what we're talking about today, simply transportation. 11:58 But if you listen to this show right now, it can really include any industry. It can include leveraging new technology to fill the gaps.When we fill the gaps, we are solving problems. 12:10 Transportation needs technology to move goods and people at faster rates than ever before. We talk about exponential change, right? We talk about change evolving. 12:22 We talk about what's happening, but we need innovation in the infrastructure. We need innovation in the transportation processing and methods. But quite simply, it's, it's a word of just simply needing innovation. 12:37 It's all about innovation, and we need to collaborate with the young and the old, the middle age. It really doesn't matter, but we get stuck in mud. 12:47 We're in quicksand right now, and I believe young minds will be that central component of all of the things that involve innovation. 12:56 If only we can find and encourage them to consider a career in the transportation industry, innovation will be key to the transportation in the months ahead. 13:08 But it really is more important to understanding the supply chain, whether we think about Industry 4.0, Industry 5.0, whether it's the cloud, the edge, it really doesn't matter. 13:20 We need the data to be able to figure out how we're gonna move these things seamlessly. 13:26 How are you gonna tap into it is really the most important thing that I think we need to be considering right now, and I think that's the point that we have to be considering and contemplating because I think we're losing sight of the most important thing. 13:42 Whether we're a baby boomer, a Gen Z, a millennial, whatever, a, an alpha, a screener, whatever, I coined that term, it doesn't really matter. 13:53 I think what really matter is right now how are we leveraging the skills and the culture and the environment to solve the most pressing problems that we all have? 14:05 And right now we're talking about are we e- entering a recession, a depression, whatever. 14:10 I think more importantly is we need to have the goods to keep our industries, our businesses moving seamlessly, and so that there is no stop. There is no shortage of toilet paper, of semiconductors or chips. 14:25 It doesn't matter. We need to know that there's no stop in the, our airplanes, in our buses, at our ports, you know, at our planes, whatever it might be. We need our rail systems moving. 14:38 We need it all moving together, but who's gonna help us do it? Is it the individual minds? Is it the individual technology? Is it the individual people? People, process, technology, that's what we need to solve. 14:50 All right, the question is how are you gonna tap into it to make it happen? All right, listeners, that's all the time I have for this segment. 14:56 I'd love for you to tweet at me a- and continue this conversation on social media at Connected World. As always, get up on LinkedIn. I'd love for you to engage in the conversations we have up there. 15:07 But this is all the time we have for this first segment. Check out our website at Connected World or our show website at thepeggyסmedleyshow.com. Make sure to share and subscribe to these episodes each week. 15:18 Don't go away. We're gonna take a quick commercial break, but we will be right back. This is The Peggy Smedley Show, your voice for our connected world. And remember, with great technology comes great responsibility. 15:29 Get that quick cup of coffee and come join me for our quick conversation with our wonderful guests.
