Transcripts

What You Missed On The Vector Episode 16: “Driving Momentum in Space Workforce Solutions”

Written by: Morsiell Dormu

In this episode of The Vector, host Kelli Kedis Ogborn discusses the evolving space workforce, featuring insights from Mel Stricklan, Executive Director of Space Workforce 2030, and Mike French, Vice President of Space Systems at the Aerospace Industries Association. Recorded live at the 39th Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, the conversation highlights the challenges and opportunities shaping the future of the global space workforce.

Key Highlights:

Segment 1: Space Workforce 2030 with Mel Stricklan

About Space Workforce 2030:

  • A collective of 30 leading space companies addressing the STEM workforce crisis by inspiring and preparing individuals from education to employment.
  • Focuses on:
    • Inspiring K-12 students to pursue STEM.
    • Supporting higher education through internships.
    • Ensuring inclusivity through employee resource groups to retain talent.
  • Launched in 2022 as a coalition of CEOs, the initiative aims to address the growing gap between STEM graduates and increasing industry demand.

Why Now?

  • The space industry is experiencing a renaissance with unprecedented growth, but the STEM talent pipeline is shrinking. Immediate action is necessary to avoid long-term workforce shortages.

Vision for the Future Workforce:

  • A vibrant, inclusive workforce that reflects diverse societal ideologies, backgrounds, and experiences.
  • Stricklan emphasizes the need for collaboration across the industry to inspire and retain talent.

Segment 2: Workforce Growth and Regional Initiatives with Mike French

Current Landscape of Space Jobs:

  • Approximately 360,000 space jobs in the U.S., part of 2.1 million aerospace and defense roles.
  • The space sector has seen consistent growth over the past five years, even through COVID-19 disruptions.
  • Space jobs are growing at twice the rate of other industries, driven by:
    • Steady government investment (e.g., NASA and Space Force budgets).
    • Significant commercial investment spurring new businesses and job opportunities.

Key Workforce Trends:

  1. Retention Challenges:
    • High turnover during COVID-19 (e.g., 40% workforce turnover in some companies).
    • Improving job satisfaction and stabilizing retention rates post-COVID.
  2. Retirement Wave:
    • Up to 3.5 million expected retirements across aerospace and defense.
    • A critical need to backfill roles and capture institutional knowledge.
  3. Classified Job Openings:
    • An estimated 70,000 classified job vacancies represent a significant opportunity for workforce expansion.

This episode underscores the urgent need for a sustainable space workforce pipeline. By prioritizing diversity, empowering educators, and fostering local partnerships, Space Workforce 2030 and the Space Workforce Coalition are paving the way for a more inclusive and dynamic industry.

Final Thought: The global space ecosystem is not just about technology—it’s about people. As Kelli aptly states, “There’s a place for everyone in the future space ecosystem.”

Episode Transcript

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

Hello everyone, and welcome to the Vector where we discuss topics, trends, and insights shaping the global space ecosystem. I am your host Kelli, and I’m thrilled to be joining you in the mix of the 39th Space Symposium here in Colorado Springs. As you can imagine, and as we always say, there’s never been a better time to become part of the global space ecosystem and really underpinning this growth and opportunity is the workforce. How do we bring more people in, how do we train them, and how do we really get the voices of the future that are going to take us into the future? So, I’m thrilled to be joined by Mel Stricklan, who is the executive director of Space Workforce 2030, which is an exciting new initiative that’s really going to do all of that for us. So thank you for being here.

Mel Stricklan:

Well, we’re going to try. I’m happy to be here. This is my favorite place on earth. I often tell people, this is my Disney.

I love it. The energy and the intellectual stimulation that we get here is just unlike any other place on earth. So thank you for having me. Space Workforce 2030 is an effort to really take a glance from education to employment or from the classroom all the way to corporate. And what we’re doing with this is a collective. So it takes all of us to really build the workforce of the future because right now we have a STEM crisis. So if you think of this as a national space renaissance that we’re having right now, it’s the people, like you said, it’s the people, it’s the creativity. It’s the ingenuity behind the workforce and behind the technologies that we see today that make it all possible. However, if you think about the graduates coming out of university with higher education degrees with science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, those numbers are actually going down while the jobs are actually going up.

That Delta is a crisis today. In 2022, we came together a bunch of CEOs. I was one at the time, one of the first signatories for space Workforce 2030 in an effort to look across the entire pipeline from education to employment. So inspire K through 12, prepare higher education, and then internships as well, experiential internships, and then move on to employ and what are those resource groups that actually retain the workforce, make them feel like they belong inclusivity? What are those best practices? Let’s get this collective of 30 leading space companies to share how they’re doing it, what challenges they have and how we can all as a collective do better. And so I came on to scale what tremendous effort that they’ve put together over the last two years, and I’m happy to be here.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

No, we’re so happy that you’ve taken the helm. To your point, there is a coalition of the willing amongst the industry and the stakeholders to realize that there is this need, there is this gap. And so why would you say now is the right time to roll out an initiative like this?

Mel Stricklan:

Well, frankly, because we’re a little behind and we’ve got a fix action, but more importantly, the next generation needs to understand that they have a place in space and we need to go to those underrepresented groups across our country and show them pathways into this industry so that we grow the industry in a way that can meet the challenges of tomorrow. We don’t have the answers, but they will.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

Well, and I think it’s a really, really smart way to look at it because instead of top down, it’s bottom up. And in a lot of ways it’s learning from the people that are going to be doing into the future. And so where do you see the biggest opportunities for this initiative?

Mel Stricklan:

I really see it with women and people of color in geographical regions that may not be those that typically are attracted to the universities that have aero and astro engineering and science and technology engineering mathematics degrees. And so that’s a huge opportunity for us across the nation. I see. Another opportunity is empowering our teachers. One of the reasons that we partnered with Space Foundation, which is a landmark partnership between Aerospace Corporation, space Foundation and Space Workforce 2030 is because of the mission overlap that Space Foundation has on the educational reach inside our own country and globally. And so, I see a huge opportunity to answer your question on ensuring that our teachers are equipped, are equipped with resources, with curriculum, and that space is not an intimidating subject. So that’s a huge opportunity. National Space Day is May 3rd this

Mel Stricklan:

Yeah, we’re very excited about it. And so that’s an opportunity for us as the foundation for us as Space Workforce 2030, and for any of our collective companies and any fourth and fifth grade classroom around the nation to stream curriculums, to stream inspirational videos from those that are actually changing the dynamic of the space industry today. So we’re excited. I think that’s a great opportunity.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

Absolutely. And you really highlighted this pipeline approach, which is really critical because at Space Foundation we always say that space begins in the classroom

Mel Stricklan:

Because you need to get people inspired and interested early so, they don’t self-select out of the industry. We can talk all day long about how cool it is, but somebody needs to be able to see themselves in a job and actually contributing. So when you look across the value chain of all the different types of stakeholders, how do you see them playing in concert with each other? Who takes the lead? Who follows? I know it’s probably a tightly orchestrated type of initiative.

Mel Stricklan:

It is tight, but it’s also loose. So each one of the companies that are partners with Space Workforce, 2030, many of them have their own STEM initiatives. And so we lock onto that. We help them understand how to scale that, but they also come to the table with best practices to help those companies that don’t have formal STEM programs or don’t have formal employee resource groups to make sure that their workforce is retained. And so I think this is one of the first examples that I’ve seen in my 30 year career in space industry to really open up channels of feedback and channels of communication across a very competitive landscape of companies and bring best practices to bear so that we all keep the workforce within the space industry. And don’t lose those two adjacencies, but also inspire the next generation collectively. Lessons learned is a big hub and spoke opportunity for our program.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

And I think the feedback loop is really critical because we’re all betting on a hypothesis of what the future is going to look like and we need all of the best minds coming together to realize how to do it, how to pivot, how to bring everyone to the table. So we’re really excited about this. And when you look at the future, what does that workforce look like to you?

Mel Stricklan:

Yeah, I think that is a vibrant workforce. It’s the most diverse space workforce we’ve ever seen. Fast forward 10, 15 years, 20 years, 30 years. I do think that we will have a representation within our space workforce that doesn’t look like it does today, but reflects more of our societal ideologies, our societal, socioeconomic spectrum of backgrounds, gender, race. I think we’re going to be more diverse for sure.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

Yeah, and it’s a critical point because later we’re going to be talking with Mike French about the Space Workforce Coalition and the different locality initiatives popping up, and it’s really critical to be able to meet people where they are and then be able to build upon it. And so if you could look at the year ahead, what are you the most excited about?

Mel Stricklan:

Well, I mean right now National Space Day is right on the cusp. So May 3rd will be an initiative. It is a bipartisan bi camal initiative where our nation’s leaders are coming together and saying, we need a date, a national holiday, so to speak, so that we can all celebrate space so that families can come together and celebrate space. And so that we can provide those families, those schools, those enthusiasts with materials, with curriculum, with pathways to our industry. So that’s right around the corner on May 3rd. Very excited about that. And then the National Space Intern Program this year, we’ve opened that up beyond women and people of color. We have the richest database of women and people of color within that national intern program, but we’re opening it up. We need all in our industry. We actually have over 4,000 registered diverse candidates today, and all of our partner companies now have the opportunity to bring their interns, whether they came through the National Intern program or not with Space Workforce 2030 to be a member of the National Space Intern Program. And so they will now across these interns, have the opportunity, just like the companies to share best practices, what are they learning from a culture perspective, from an industry perspective to share. So

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

Yeah, internships are really critical because it allows people to actually get hands-on experience and the doing. That they’re not just speculating on the types of jobs they want, but they can actually move forward. And so if someone wants to find out more information or get involved, where should they go?

Mel Stricklan:

They should go to SWF2030.org. And there you can find out more about the National Space Day. If you’re a fourth or fifth grade teacher or students, there’s a QR code there to sign up and receive that stream on May 3rd. You can also learn about the National Space Intern program and the overall effort.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

Wonderful. Well, we’re so excited to have you at the helm of this and really bringing,

Mel Stricklan:

Thank you,

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

Bringing everybody along because we say all the time with the Vector and Space Commerce Institute, there really is a place for everyone in the future space ecosystem. And so instead of just saying it, we’re now doing it. Right. So, thank you so much, and I can’t wait to see what we accomplished this year.

 

Mel Stricklan:

Me too. Together. Together or Better Together.

 

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

I am now joined by Mike French, who is the Vice President of Space Systems at the Aerospace Industries Association. And Mike, welcome back.

Mike French:

Thanks. Glad to be here.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

We had such an engaging and fun conversation last year looking at workforce, and so much has changed in the industry. And we heard from Mel earlier about the space Workforce 2030 challenge and really how the industry should think about the skills and capabilities gap. And I know that you guys also pay close attention to it. So what are you seeing in the industry?

Mike French:

Yeah, just a scene setter to where things stand. So if we think about space jobs in the United States, there’s about 360,000 space jobs in the United States. That’s a subset about 2.1 million aerospace and defense jobs. And a couple things very promising things we’ve seen in the last few years. So one is we’ve seen continuous growth in space sector jobs over the last five years, and that includes through Covid. So through that disruption, we still saw growth there. The other really good trend we’re seeing is that it’s projected to have two X job growth in the space sector versus sort of the average sector in America. The other really interesting thing is that there’s expected to be a lot more growth on the skilled technical workforce side. So if you think about machinists, electricians, that side of the business versus the four year degree side. Interesting. So that’s another interesting trend. Well, that said, there’s three things. We’re also though kind of paying attention to a little bit of, we need to know more. Maybe they’re warning signs, maybe they’re not. The first is with retention. So last time we talked, that was a big issue. I was just talking last night to a senior executive in a space business who through Covid, 40% of their workforce turned over, which is really incredible.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

That is incredible.

Mike French:

And so, we had a lot of that movement and a lot of retention issues. What we’re seeing now is that’s probably settling down. You’re also seeing saying that’s pretty cool. You’re seeing some of the highest jobs satisfaction surveys of people at work sort of across the board. So that’s a really interesting trend from the last time we talked. The other thing that we’re keeping an eye on is retirements, right? We’ve always talked about this retirement wave and how that’s going to go. We’ve seen some studies that say we should see up to 3.5 million people retire across the a and d workforce, which is incredible number

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

That is big.

Mike French:

And then finally, it is more of a niche thing, but it’s really important to us in the space business, which is jobs that require a classification. So some of the last numbers that I’ve seen on this is they had something, we had something like 70,000 jobs that required a classification that had openings. So really a tremendous opportunity there.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

Yeah, I mean, more and more you see a lot of people that are paying attention to space trying to find their place within space. And a follow-up question to what you said just about this growth trend. What I find interesting within space is I think we’ve seen about a 30% growth within workforce, which is significantly higher, as you said, across other industries, which I think has been about 8%. Why is that with space beyond the fact that space is exciting and the jobs are cool, what is attracting people to this?

Mike French:

You’ve seen a lot of investment that’s bringing, with investment comes jobs, and you’ve seen it both on the government side. If you just look over the past five years, you’ve seen incredibly steady increases on the NASA side as well as on the national security space side. Really just tremendous growth. If you just look at the Space Force budget, for example, it went from around 15 billion to nearly 30 billion in just a couple years. You couple that government investment with an incredible amount of commercial investments, and that’s just creating a ton of new businesses, which means a ton of new jobs

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

Blowing it out a bit farther. So this has been a very exciting week for space, not just because of the symposium, and it’s our 39th and it brings together 12,000 people from the ecosystem, but also because of all of the announcements within workforce. So we heard the report findings from Space Workforce 2030, but there was also the Workforce Coalition that was announced more through the White House and Alabama and Colorado were added. What does that mean?

Mike French:

It’s a really exciting coalition. So those wanting to learn more, there’s a website you go to space workforce coalition.org and it captures some of the work that’s going on. What this effort got kicked off a little under two years ago, and the idea was that we knew that there are really good workforce training efforts happening around the country. And rather than create a whole bunch of new ones, we wanted companies that had a good experience to raise their hand and say, here’s an example of something that works. Let’s look at this and see if there’s things they’re doing in this area that can be translated elsewhere. And so we started with Los Angeles, the Gulf Coast, new Orleans and the Space Coast, and just this week they announced that Alabama, the Huntsville area, is joining this coalition as well as the state of Colorado. And so it is been exciting because these are all places that are sort of best practices that are already doing it, and we’re being able to see what can we take from them and what’s regional, what’s national. And so that’s pretty exciting to see what we’re going to learn.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

And what do you think are the skills and capabilities that are going to be necessary to make this successful in scale?

Mike French:

A couple things. One is that the people who do this for a living are involved and that’s who we’re asking.

And that’s been really one of the great successes. The other thing that we’ve learned is how things work on the regional level can be really important. And that’s why we have these regional leads, these regional experts. So for example, when I look at the Los Angeles area, something they’ve been very successful with is working through workforce boards and through apprenticeship programs. Why that’s really interesting is that’s a system that you can find throughout the country.

 

And so, by the nature of how they’re doing it and how they’re working regionally, there’s a model that can be done nationally.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

Yeah. Well, and what’s important about that is you’re not trying to roll out sort of a holistic scale that applies to every state. It has to have that regional flavor. It has to take advantage of the industries and the interests and really the skill sets in those areas to make it sustainable.

Mike French:

Exactly. I think a good example of where regions matter is the Florida Space Coast.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

Yeah, absolutely.

Mike French:

So, the Florida Space Coast has seen tremendous growth in the space manufacturing side, which is a bit different than traditionally. It was more about operations and launch. And so there you really need to introduce a whole workforce to the opportunities there. Right. Very different than Los Angeles where you have one of the largest workforces in America already

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

There. When you’ve mentioned earlier the ability of bringing more technical trades to the table. So what are those skills that you think are really critical to get involved in the space ecosystem to really fill that gap and bring us into the future?

Mike French:

What’s really, I think, misunderstood is the skill technical work, what you do on the skill technical workforce side of the space business. There’s a misperception of this as sort of a dirty job in a lot of smoke and stuff going on around you operating large machinery. If you’ve been, and I know you have been to a space manufacturing floor, they couldn’t be cleaner.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

Absolutely.

Mike French:

In fact, they have to be. And so the work is really about working with these incredibly advanced machinery. It’s keeping those machines going, it’s operating those machines. It’s repairing them when they go down. And many of these skills are skills that you see in other areas, whether that’s electrical work, HVAC technicians are actually incredibly important. Oh, interesting. Yeah. And so, you see, you have these different roles where we know how to train these folks. In a lot of areas, it’s about letting them know that there’s this really good job doing really cool stuff, and a program you can take where you get paid to learn

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

Well, and what’s nice about that is that I find that so many people will self-select out of the industry because they don’t necessarily see themselves represented or understand how they’re relevant. But this re-skilling and up-skilling and retooling and not really starting from scratch is really, I think going to help us in the long run.

Mike French:

And that is such a great point. We hurt ourselves.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

Yeah.

Mike French:

We love jargon. Do we love acronyms? We have job descriptions that you can’t make it to the end. It’s too much to get through. So, we make it seem like there’s a barrier to entry when at the end of the day, we’ve done our own study where something like 80 some percent of people would be interested to work in space. But then a much lower number actually thought they could. And a lot of that’s on us.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

Well, and I think that now that there’s conversations evolving where more and more stakeholders, more and more players are really starting to decentralize what it means to be part of space, and like you said, lower the barrier of entry, how do those partnerships pan out? So obviously there’s the need to educate the population. There’s the need to fund it, there’s the need to do programs. What does that ecosystem look like to scale?

Mike French:

A really important thing to remember is it starts with local partnerships, and the reason is there’s a misperception that the American workforce is sort of moving all over the place when in fact, most people live and work pretty close to where they grew

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

Up or they end up going back.

Mike French:

Exactly. That’s right. And so part of this is what is the local channels to energize and inform the local workforce? Something we’ve seen through the Workforce program coalition that’s been really interesting is getting the industry that has the job opportunities connected to the educators. Typically community colleges is really important so that they can work together in partnership to make sure that training matches available jobs. The other thing that we’ve seen is sometimes that’s tough if it’s small or mid-size manufacturers because they only may need a handful of jobs, which is not enough to support a whole training program. And so what some of these regions have done very much wisely is they’ve captured the job types that are shared across maybe several small or medium companies. So then together they could support train at a community college. Interesting. That when those folks come out, they could then go to one of these five smaller entities.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

Does it help inform the curriculum and the courses that are taught? Or how does that push and pull work?

Mike French:

100%.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

I love that answer.

Mike French:

Yeah. We’ve heard from the folks that do this, that this works best when there’s a real job at the end of the pipeline and they work backwards to what trainings needed. And when I said partnership, it’s very real and both in real dollars and investment. So in some cases, the jobs need special equipment, for example, radio frequency technicians. And in those cases, some employers will donate that equipment to the community college so that the students can work on the actual equipment to really train before they get on the floor.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

I think that’s important. To your point about us doing ourselves a disservice, especially with the way that job requirements are written and others, I think that being able to get hands-on training to then learn the skills, and we are really talking about capabilities of the future, which we can speculate, but we don’t necessarily know. So allowing that iterative approach I think is really important.

Mike French:

Absolutely. And the one group that we can’t forget are the educators themselves. So we need these people who are pretty skilled, who can then also have the skill of educating. And so we see that as another area where we got to think a lot about it. And one thing that some regions have done well is capture existing workers to come and take some of their time to be teachers.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

Cool.

Mike French:

As well as retired workers, having them come back and serve in training roles.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

It’s a really great way to close the pipeline. So I know that we’ve covered a lot of ground, and I’m curious from your perspective, what is the one thing that needs to happen to make this successful?

Mike French:

Well, one, we want to keep seeing the space industry thrive. So whether that’s through government investment, commercial investment, the success of the industry drives the need. And then with the need, it’s always better to have jobs we need to fill than jobs we don’t.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

Absolutely.

Mike French:

So, I think that’s the first thing is the focus on growth. Second, I think this idea that we pay attention to what’s happening at the local level and then learn from them in a way that’s organic, where we can pull what they’re doing to other regions.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

Yeah, I think that’s a really important component because so many strategies come top down, but this really has to have a bottom-up approach, especially to put the parameters in place and get the buy-in from the people that are actually going to be necessary to scale.

Mike French:

Yep. Absolutely.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

Well, Mike, I really appreciate your time today, and I know that it’s a busy week for you, but I think it’s important to let people know about where the industry is going and especially to find their place within it. So, thank you for joining us.

Mike French:

Yeah, no, thank you.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

Absolutely. And to all of our listeners, thank you so much. Again, we’re in the epicenter of the 39th Space Symposium. Please tune in for Future Vector episodes. And remember, there’s a place for everyone in the future space ecosystem. Take care.

 



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