By Jonathan Kropp, Regional Director-Employer Engagement, San Diego & Imperial Valley Region
Logistics and supply chain management have become a critical business function in today’s global economy[1].
Companies who actively manage their supply chain do so to lower costs and increase competitive advantages. Supply chain & logistics practitioners can be found in almost every type of business from manufacturing to healthcare.
After some exploratory research in 2020 it was determined by the San Diego Regional Director for Advanced Transportation & Logistics that there was a need to develop a regional strategy for Supply Chain & Logistics. The first step in this process was collaborating with the Centers of Excellence to dive into labor market data and educational supply & demand gaps.
What we found was that San Diego region has seen some large growth in areas of the sector such as planning, which grew by more than 94% between 2009 and 2019[2], suggesting that careers in this sector have become very important to the region. Additionally, the sector is under supplied both regionally and statewide by a large margin. San Diego County has annual opening of 6,521 with 1,976 awards. Comparatively, there around 85,659 annual opening in California with only 6,733 awards[3]. Not only are these careers in high demand, entry-level and median earnings are above the living wage (Exhibit 9a) and employers typically require an associate degree for many of these positions, making them an ideal fit for the San Diego Community Colleges. Read the full report here.
Once our research report was published, we felt it was important to have an employer panel comprised of local companies like WD-40, Northrop Grumman, APICS Supply Chain Council, Tandem Diabetes Care, EDF Renewables, Port Logistics Group, Petco, Jerome’s Furniture, Biotics Research, and Infinity Energy to verify our findings.
Finally, all this information was then put into a regional Strong Workforce RFA, where colleges could apply for funding to either build a program or improve an existing program. Over the last couple months, three colleges have applied for this funding with another one in the exploratory phase. All the colleges participating in this funding also create a community of practice to support efficiencies and collaboration while they build out these important projects.
