Closing the prime age employment gap

Recompete study aims to gather data on unemployed 25-to-54-year-olds in two counties

By Jerry Knaak The Daily World • July 31, 2025 1:30 am

Grays Harbor and Pacific counties have kicked off a study to figure out why so many people in the region aged 25 to 54 simply aren’t working. The survey is available in English and Spanish.

English: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/VNBS5T7

Spanish: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/VBQ65GV

Known as the prime age employment gap, Grays Harbor County has the largest in Washington and is 15% above the national average.

Last fall, Greater Grays Harbor, Inc. (GGHI) landed a $500,000 “recompete” grant to study the problem. Recompete is a much shorter way of saying “Economic Development Administration’s Rebuilding Economies and Creating Opportunities for More People to Excel program.”

According to GGHI CEO Darrin Raines, the efforts to land this grant and kick off this effort predates the start of his tenure at GGHI.

“This started before I arrived in this position. … Pacific County was brought into this because they are part of the footprint of Grays Harbor College,” Raines said. “We were funded with (former congressman) Derek Kilmer’s great support right at $500,000 with federal EDA (Economic Development Administration) funds.”

GGHI is teaming up with Grays Harbor County Public Health, Grays Harbor College, Pacific County, the Pacific Mountain Workforce Development Council and other partners in the region as part of what’s officially known as the “Washington State Coastal Counties Initiative Recompete Pilot Program — Strategy Development Grant.” Grays Harbor County Public Health Director Mike McNickle will serve as the Recompete Plan Coordinator.

The grant will fund “coordination and execution of an inclusive, locally defined planning process, across jurisdictions and agencies, to develop a comprehensive regional strategy to address prime-age employment gaps,” which will include a 10-part program and associated activities.

The initial study aims to understand the conditions that led to the region’s high prime age employment gap. The grant application states, “For the past 30 years, the area has experienced continuous economic decline, high unemployment rates, growing poverty, and increases in drug addictions, behavioral health challenges, crime, and a growing homeless population.”

Much like the recently launched Grays Harbor County Public Health assessment survey, the Recompete survey will consist of three phases — direct public responses to the survey, informant interviews with stakeholders including employers, and focus groups.

Yale University’s Budget Lab reported that as of April 2024, 80.8% of all workers aged 25 to 54 were employed which marked a return to pre-COVID-19 pandemic levels. However, Grays Harbor County has proven to be an exception. Although the unemployment rate in the region has been trending downward, the prime age employment gap and population-employment ratio have remained inversely proportional.

Part of the problem in identifying the issues preventing people in this age bracket from working is the disparity in the generations and their attitudes and aspirations in today’s world of work. Generation X (born 1965 to 1980), Millennials (born 1981 to 1996), and Generation Z (born 1997 to 2012) all have different thoughts, feelings and requirements regarding employment. Many are at different stages of their lives and careers.

“The (GenX) group that stayed here, some of them, right out of high school or college or any other training they took, they went into a career in the timber industry, fishing, or some type of manufacturing, and once some of those things went away, they didn’t adapt, or look for the other opportunities that were still out there. Some did and became very successful,” Raines said. “When I talk to the high school superintendents and CTE (career technical education) directors, the way people are brought up, their way of thinking and what they’re being told — there’s no future here, you can’t make a good career on the Harbor and that’s just totally false. There’s a lot of opportunity.”

Raines added changing the mindset of younger people who are getting ready to enter the workforce is one of the keys to closing the prime age employment gap.

According to McNickle, the study will try to ascertain what other factors, including mental health and addiction, are keeping people out of the workforce.

“We developed a survey we want to send to the target population to really try to dive into what it is. We’re going to have diverse answers depending on age group. The 25-to-30-year-olds are going to be much different than 50 to 54,” McNickle said. “We want to make sure we get enough people to participate so we can elicit information out of that … and figure out what it is that’s driving the issue. Why are you unemployed? We can make guesses. We really need to have that data so we can make practical changes to the system that will actually impact them.”

A Workday whitepaper produced by Human Resource Executive titled Engaging the Workforce Across Generations cites Phyllis Weiss Haserot, president and founder of the Practice Development Counsel, and her book You Can’t Google It!: The Compelling Case for Cross-Generational Conversation at Work, which discusses five things to know about each generation that tend to impact significant interaction among members of each generation. She also discusses fears that influence and differentiate the generations. There doesn’t appear to be much commonality across the generations when it comes to goals, work ethic and priorities.

The whitepaper also indicates, “When trying to build a culture that crosses the t’s and dots the i’s for all generations of employees, utilizing today’s analytics tools has become critical.”

That’s where the Recompete study comes in. In order to understand the prime age employment gap in the Grays Harbor region, data must first be collected and then analyzed.

Despite the differences between the generations, there are numerous elements that contribute to the overall ecosystem and the people in it. Concerns about affordable housing, healthcare, childcare, education and transportation affect everyone in the workforce or those looking to enter or re-enter.

The impetus when it comes to employment is usually placed on the jobseeker. Typically, employers will post a job on any number of platforms and it’s up to the individual to hunt those opportunities down. Raines and GGHI’s Director of Business Development Loretta Thomas said employers could do a better job evangelizing their openings.

“We have a definite lack of workforce development advertisement. In a rural county, it just adds a barrier to the reach for some of that stuff,” Thomas said.

“There’s probably a lot of opportunities out there that people just don’t know about, because you don’t see it on Indeed, or ZipRecruiter or LinkedIn or one of the other recruiting sites,” Raines said. “(Employers) feel that the people who want those jobs are going to be looking anyway, they’ll come to us. Everybody has to change a bit.”

Career and job fairs could also help close the gap. According to Raines, there are not enough of them in the region.

“That is something Loretta and I have talked about as a goal for GGHI is to have more career fairs, business fairs, to help not only the employers get the information out there but people seeking work,” Raines said. “It helps the person looking for the job, but also our businesses that are out there struggling (to get the word out).”

Another element to the world of work that doesn’t get talked about in the Grays Harbor region is entrepreneurship. According to Thomas, there is untapped opportunity.

“Entrepreneurship is something that the Department of Commerce is pushing, that’s something we’re involved in, there are programs out there,” Thomas said.

The Recompete survey dovetails and overlaps with the Grays Harbor County Public Health Assessment. Raines said he had a bit of an epiphany when he realized that health and workforce development were directly related.

“I started reading some of the things that County Public Health was doing in late 2024 and I was thinking we’re missing the boat here. We see so many things that are happening together they overlap,” Raines said. “In early January I had a meeting with (County) Commissioner (Georgia) Miller and (County Administrator) Sam Kim, and they wanted me to update them on Recompete, and I talked about what we were doing and what Public Health was doing and the light bulbs went off. We said why don’t we work together on this? Absolutely.”

The plan is for the Recompete’s Strategy Development Grant to lead to additional EDA grant money that will fund the execution of a comprehensive strategic plan while creating a community conversation, and ending the stigma surrounding employment opportunities in the world of work in Grays Harbor and Pacific counties.

“The goal of the whole thing is to say if we have this many people in the prime age employment gap population, and we can get this many jobs, if we talk to employers and say if we did all the training and had grant funding and the moon and the stars lined up, how many people could you employ, what would it take to get there? What does it take?” McNickle said. “So, we have this strategic plan, if we’re committed as a community to get these folks employed, this is what we have to do because this is the data we have.”

McNickle added that a multi-pronged effort that includes QR codes, print publications, radio, flyers, digital and social media will be used to get the word out to roughly 3,800 affected people about the survey, which will run through the end of October.

In the Workday whitepaper, Bonnie Hagemann, CEO of Executive Development Associates, Inc., said that, “from her firm’s 2019 Trends in Executive Development research, she learned that it’s time for employers to gain a soul ‘for all generations,’” and the whitepaper concludes “the more a company can show it has a vision and purpose that is much bigger than making money, the more it will be able to attract top talent from every workplace generation.”

McNickle said the key to the initiative is creating a conversation about the prime age employment gap.

“My goal for this strategic plan is a community conversation. If we can build community conversation about what we’re trying to do, from the employer’s standpoint, from the employee’s standpoint, and all of us who have a stake in that relationship, that’s the key,” McNickle said. “We need to start talking about these things. No one’s really talking about it. We need to get off the stigma and the way to do that is to have community conversation.”

That conversation may have already started as the Recompete grant has the attention of elected officials such as Rep. Adam Bernbaum (D-24th District).

“We have the highest prime age employment gap in the state. That means there are more people here between 25 and 54 who aren’t employed. That is not their fault. That has come from a lack of economic development here,” Bernbaum said. “And it’s been a long time. This has been an issue, and I would like to contribute to it how I can. It’s a lot of state dollars that are going to continue to come into Grays Harbor County as we try and make this a place for people to find jobs, let them stay in this community and live prosperous lives. You want to be thoughtful. I don’t think people want more reactive governance. I think that what they want is a serious, thoughtful plan that has a real chance of generating economic opportunity in this county.”

The grant application’s summary sums up the overall effort pretty well:

“By addressing immediate needs for locally skilled workers for today’s economy and economic diversification for a long-term sustainability economy, coordinating workforce development programs and partnerships, improving public services and infrastructure, partnering with social support programs, and engaging the community, this preliminary outline of a Strategic Development Plan aims to overcome roadblocks and create a path towards economic prosperity for the region. With the award of a Strategy Development Grant, the region will be well positioned to build a bright future of economic prosperity, good paying jobs, and highly skilled workers that will recompete now, and for generations to come.”