Tuesday job fair meant to target kids for careers earlier

BELOIT — A “gray wave” is underway in the United States, with about 10,000 Baby Boomers retiring daily, according to demographics experts.

That is causing industry after industry to scramble to find workers to fill positions. According to the Job Center of Wisconsin, there were 137,000 job openings in Rock County in February. By 2030, as many as 1.4 million technical jobs and 2.1 manufacturing jobs could go unfilled in the U.S., according to a study by Deloitte and The Manufacturing Institute.

On Tuesday, the Greater Beloit Economic Development Corp. and Greater Beloit Chamber of Commerce took a new tact in trying to fill that career pipeline — for the first time hosting a job fair for middle schoolers still a few years away from starting their careers.

“Career exploration has to start young so they can start really learning about it when they’re in high school and applying it,” said Laura Benisch, director of career planning and partnerships at The Lincoln Academy. “Getting excited about what they want to do earlier is better. If they don’t see what’s out there, they can’t imagine because they don’t know.”

Tuesday’s career fair was held at the Stateline Boys & Girls Club, 202 Maple Ave. It drew more than 600 students from six area schools or districts — School District of Beloit, Beloit Turner, The Lincoln Academy, Clinton, South Beloit and Rock County Christian.

More than 30 employers or community groups took part, including some of the area’s more recognizable names such as Beloit Health System and the Beloit Fire Department, but also some smaller companies such as New Leaf Remodeling of Rockford and Cornerstone Credit Union of South Beloit.

Jeff Stenroos, director of certified technical education and alternative education for the School District of Beloit, said his counterparts at the various districts have discussed doing job fairs in the future at the elementary levels. For now, the goal is to make the middle school job fair bigger and better next year.

“Businesses were hesitant this year,” Stenroos said of the efforts to get companies to come to the job fair. “I heard a lot of ‘no, I don’t want to do middle school because I want to focus on high school.’ We were like, this gets them, then they’re working for you in high school. If you wait until their junior or senior years, they’ll find somebody else.”