Katie Brown, PhD
There is a growing understanding of just how crucial immigrants and refugees are to the U.S. economy and workforce. Economists now estimate that a recent and sharp decline of new immigrants coming to this country accounts for about half of the millions of workers currently missing from the labor force. With COVID-19 pandemic restrictions loosening and the U.S. working to welcome hundreds of thousands of newcomers from numerous nations – including Afghanistan and Ukraine, and more recently, Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela – the trend has now started to reverse. If we make up this lost ground, immigrants and their children stand to make up 97 percent of the growth in our workforce by 2030.
However, the United States must do more than simply welcome immigrants and refugees at its borders. We must also actively ensure newcomers’ full economic inclusion. A critical first step is fostering English proficiency. English is the enabling skill for opportunity and social mobility in this country, but the U.S. currently meets the needs of just 4 percent of adult English learners.
On this front, our country is woefully behind the curve. In France and Canada, immigrants have access to free language instruction, often accompanied by complimentary childcare and transportation. Sweden provides most newcomers with free unlimited Swedish lessons, sometimes integrated into its job-training programs. Germany likewise offers many apprenticeship programs with built-in language training.
The U.S. would be wise to follow these successful and inclusive models. As the gateway to skills development for millions of workers, workforce boards are well-suited to serve as the home of these programs. Workforce and other economic development organizations should provide New Americans with the resources they need to transition to careers that reflect their valuable skills, knowledge, and experiences. English instruction is a critical component of this work.
And it needs to be more than an afterthought. Workforce boards must do more than direct immigrants, refugees, and speakers of other languages toward the nearest adult ESL program, which is, currently, standard operating procedure for many boards. Research has long demonstrated that personalized, contextualized language learning tailored to adults’ real-world needs is far more effective than the traditional, one-size-fits-all approach relying on ineffective methods like rote memorization and flashcards. By investing in research-backed English instruction practices that integrate sector-specific workforce vocabulary, skills, and context, workforce boards can help advance local workers’ English proficiency and their technical and career skills – a win-win combo for both workers and the U.S. workforce.
Employers are already taking on this challenge for their incumbent workers, from Fortune 500 like Amazon, Walmart, and Tyson Foods, which offer foundational, career-aligned English programs as part of their employee benefits packages, to smaller, regional employers, like Taziki’s Mediterranean Cafe, which invests in helping back-of-the-house restaurant employees develop the English skills they need to manage their own franchises.
It’s time for workforce boards to be part of this proven solution, by helping job-seekers with integrated career and English skills so that they can access family-sustaining jobs in high-demand sectors. Workforce boards can follow models established by workplace-based employer programs – and also by forward-thinking educational providers who are aligning language skills with career training for in-demand careers and certifications. Scalable models include the ski lift maintenance apprenticeship program at ADVANCE in Lake Tahoe, CA or the English boot camps offered for specific career training programs allied healthcare, IT, and logistics at the Peninsula Regional Educational Program in VA.
Employers, educational providers, and immigrant and refugee-supporting organizations that invest in contextualized, career-aligned language learning models are able to see that more than 90 percent of their participants have improved their English proficiency, and 80 percent reported achieving major career goals, such as earning pay raises and promotions.
This impact is ripe for replication by workforce boards and other economic development organizations across the U.S., ensuring that high-quality, career-aligned language instruction is as accessible for New Americans as it is for newcomers in France and Canada, Sweden and Germany. By treating English training as an employment skill as important as any other, workforce boards can help to fill crucial workforce gaps and ensure that newcomers gain more equitable access to rewarding, well-paying careers.
Katie Brown, PhD, is founder of EnGen, a Certified B Corporation that has delivered personalized, career-aligned English language upskilling to more than 45,000 adult learners across the U.S. since its launch in 2020. Learn more at getengen.com
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