Iowa’s workforce is showing mixed signals.

Fewer people are working compared to a year ago and more are unemployed. While many employers have slowed hiring, others struggle to fill open positions.  

Amid the challenges, though, are reasons for optimism. A growing number of Iowa school districts are adding or expanding career and technical education programs, equipping students to enter the workforce right after graduation. Iowa Workforce Development is connecting workers who have been laid off with companies that are hiring.

These trends – both worrisome and encouraging – were the focus of the Business Record’s recent virtual Jobs Outlook discussion.

Panelists included Ben Ayers, senior economist, Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co.; Tessa Brow, director, career services, Iowa State University; Jamie Carlson, chief human resources officer, The Iowa Clinic; Kathy Joblinske, market principal, Manpower; Steven Schappaugh, executive director of secondary education, West Des Moines school district; and Georgia Van Gundy, deputy director, Iowa Workforce Development.

The following are some key takeaways from the discussion.

Iowa’s shrinking workforce

Iowa had 2,300 fewer people working in August than it did a year ago, Iowa Workforce Development data shows. In August 2024, there were 1,595,100 Iowans who were employed; in August 2025, 1,594,600.

Iowa is among just a few states in the country with a declining level of employment, Ayers said. 

“Other states have posted at least some modest growth and some of the states have increased employment by 3% or 4%,” he said. “Iowa is clearly falling behind from an overall employment perspective. Stagnation is probably the best way to describe it because there’s a lot of overall job activity happening across the state, especially when compared to some of the other areas in the country.”

Ayers explained why he thinks Iowa’s employed workforce is not growing.

“Most of it comes back to labor supply. It’s really hard to hire workers if you can’t find workers. And we know that demographics in the state are working against us. We have an aging population. More and more people are retiring and leaving the workforce, and there’s just not enough new [workers] to make up for that. We’re seeing many employers are either not moving into the state, not adding workers or they’re finding new ways to increase their productivity without adding new workers. Because of that, we’re just not seeing an overall increase in job growth.”

Connecting workers and employers

Iowa has over 50,000 job openings on its website and in August, nearly 66,000 Iowans were unemployed, a large percentage of whom were laid off from their jobs. Van Gundy explained how Iowa Workforce Development’s Rapid Response team connects workers and employers.

When layoffs occur the team “will go on site, analyze the skill set of those who are being laid off and make connections to employers that we know are hiring,” VanGundy said. “We’re trying to connect those people to other employers to make sure that we keep them here within the state of Iowa, which is important.”

A new manufacturer in the Cedar Rapids area has 100 job openings and the state is helping connect laid off workers with that employer, she said. “It’s really on us to keep a pulse for what businesses are doing so that we can help make those connections.”

Growing CTE programs

In 2024, the West Des Moines school district opened a new facility for career and technical education at its Valley Southwoods campus. The facility provides students with hands-on learning opportunities that will lead to well-paying jobs, Schappaugh said. Welding is one of the skills being taught.

“I was at the John Deere plant in Ankeny recently and they were telling me that our students who are in the apprenticeship program come very highly skilled when it comes to the welding techniques and having that technical capability,” he said.

School officials are continually reassessing whether to add new programs. One of its teachers will soon be taking part in a program offered through Project Lead the Way, a nonprofit group that provides science, technology, engineering and math education programs for students and instructors. One of the programs is manufacturing.

“We want to position our students for success in manufacturing,” Schappaugh said. “We are signing up one of our teachers to get 80 hours of professional learning so that they can be equipped to teach our students manufacturing skills and competencies to prepare them for options down the road.”

‘Upskilling’ job seekers

National surveys conducted by Manpower, which connects job seekers with employers that are hiring, show that 41% of U.S. employers are struggling to find quality candidates for job openings, Joblinske said. While there may be candidates for jobs, they don’t have the necessary skills employers are seeking, she said.

“We’re always looking at how we upskill candidates,” Joblinske said. “So maybe a candidate is coming to us with picking and packing assembly experience. How do we help upskill them to move into a machine operator position?”

Another trend Joblinske said she has noticed is a slowdown in the number of workers who are walking away from jobs. During the pandemic, “there was a lot of jumping from job to job,” she said. “It was very painful for employers with that type of rapid transition. We are doing a lot of coaching of employees, telling them to ‘Please look at the job market before making any major decisions around your employment.’”

Attracting health care workers

Numerous job opportunities exist in the health care sector but employers are having difficulty finding workers and keeping them. Nationally, and in Iowa, there is a shortage of physicians, clinical nurses and certified medical assistants, Carlson said. “We don’t have enough qualified people to fill those jobs, which is one challenge.”

The other challenge is that Central Iowa health care systems are competing for the same workers, she said. “We have to be very creative and find different ways to recruit and retain talent.”

One of the greatest needs is for certified medical assistants. Local educational programs were not filling the need, prompting Iowa Clinic to find ways to grow its own talent, Carlson said. “We have a lot of employees who love working at Iowa Clinic. They might be in a front desk role but they want to grow their career and gain more skills so we created our own CMA training program.”

Iowa Clinic has partnered with an online educational institution that provides accredited coursework for the certified medical assistant training. Iowa Clinic provides the hands-on training. “It’s been very successful but it still doesn’t provide us with enough CMAs,” Carlson said. “So we’ve also begun partnering with [high schools] to provide students with exposure to careers in health care at a younger age.”

Career fair participation

Each semester, Iowa State University sponsors career fairs at which employers can visit with students about apprenticeships and job openings. In fall 2024, 1,142 employers registered; this fall, there were 1,103 registrants, a 3.4% drop from the previous year, Brow said.

“For a while, we were worried it was going to be even lower,” she said. “We felt that employers were slower to commit to attending and that comes back to this … worry about where things are going. Some employers don’t think it’s worth going to a job fair if they don’t have internship positions or full-time positions to offer, which is why I think we saw that delay in committing.”

Students “are stressed about the market and are worrying about whether there will be job opportunities,” Brow said.