Before being named director of the Department of Workforce Services, Daryl Bassett served as director of Business & Commercial Services at the Arkansas secretary of state’s office. Before that, he was a member of the Arkansas Public Service Commission from 2001-10 and liaison for DWS to former Gov. Mike Huckabee from 1999-2001.
Bassett has a bachelor’s degree in business and public administration from Harding University in Searcy. He was named to lead the Department of Workforce Services by Gov. Asa Hutchinson in December 2014.
Arkansas’ unemployment rate fell in January to the lowest on record, 3.8 percent. (It has subsequently fallen to 3.7 percent in February.) What’s going on here?
I think we are seeing the fruits of a new way of looking at our state’s economy. We are more aggressive in our pursuits of the ideal “talent delivery system,” and industry is responding by taking a second look at hiring job seekers who may not have a strong work history, have been unemployed for a long time or have shown a work ethic but have a skills gap that keeps them underemployed.
However, I think that this willingness of employers to expand the types of candidates they are willing to hire should be coupled with job-driven training programs directed at those categories of job seekers.
While the unemployment rate is going down, the “underemployed” rate continues to rise. What’s behind that?
Someone without a job must be actively seeking employment to be considered unemployed; otherwise, he’s not part of the labor force. So when unemployment and employment both decline, as the state experienced throughout most of 2016, it indicates that some of those individuals are leaving the labor force, as opposed to going from unemployed to employed. The job of DWS is to find those people and bring them back into the labor force, and that will require collaboration across state agencies to be successful.
Where does our state have specific “skills gaps”?
The biggest gaps are in the “soft skills” and “middle skills” areas. Soft skills are valuable because they are “portable” skills that never expire. Technical skills, on the other hand, are those that continue evolving and require updating or periodic retraining. Middle-skill jobs require education beyond high school but less than a four-year degree and make up the largest part of the labor market.
There’s a significant gap between the types of jobs employers need to fill and the number of people who have the education and training to fill those jobs. Today, an estimated 29 million jobs require workers with an occupational certificate or associate degree, with annual wages ranging from $35,000-$75,000, and nearly 40 percent paying more than $50,000 a year. In Arkansas, middle-skill jobs account for 59 percent of the state’s labor market, but only 48 percent of the state’s workers are trained at the middle-skill level. The state needs more workers who have attained skills and earned the types of certificates, associate degrees and linked industry certifications that are available through workforce training and technical programs at Arkansas two-year colleges.
What are some of your agency’s most effective programs?
Jobs-driven training programs developed in conjunction with employers and that include all individuals interested in improving their career path and overall economic situation. Employers are interested in a job candidate pool that is well-trained and motivated to make their business profitable. To that end, the agency has focused significant attention on “discretionary” grants from the Department of Labor.
The state has received over $38 million in these grants over the last six years. Some of our other highlights are Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, which has been at the forefront of implementing innovative workforce development initiatives in Arkansas; Trade Adjustment Assistance; Rapid Response/Governor’s Dislocated Worker Task Force; and Re-employment Services.