While the Trump administration’s on-again off-again tariffs continue to dominate the news cycle, another concerning challenge is starting to spark conversation: the decline in the U.S. birth rate and how that will impact future supply chains. As companies struggle to fill supply chain jobs and prepare for long-term workforce sustainability, organizations like the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP) are looking for new ways to build stronger talent pipelines.
Last month, CSCMP announced it is expanding its efforts to introduce supply chain education at the high school level. Under the auspices of its Talent Center, CSCMP aims over the coming months “to create an expanded supply chain workforce beginning with middle to high school learning content introduced across the globe.” The focus of the initiative is to customize supply chain training to equip students with foundational supply chain knowledge, integrating STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) and business education.
This announcement comes on the heels of a successful pilot program at Clyde Miller Academy in St. Louis. Over the past year and a half, CSCMP partnered with the St. Louis school district to fund and provide CSCMP’s SCPro course content to high school teacher Michelle Williams, so she could develop a supply chain curriculum for her students. While many high schools across the U.S. have work-study programs, certification courses for fields like automotive maintenance, and incubator programs to teach entrepreneurial skills, Clyde Miller Academy was among the first high schools to offer a supply chain education course.
This pilot program is a great first step, but more is needed to address future workforce shortages. It’s not a problem that is easy to fix, and the decline in U.S.—and indeed, global—birth rates is something we can no longer ignore. In January of this year, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released a demographic outlook for the U.S. population for 2025 to 2055. While the population is projected to grow over the next 30 years, the CBO expects growth to slow during that period from an average of 0.4% a year between 2025 and 2035 to an average of 0.1% a year between 2036 and 2055. Other studies have reached similar conclusions. For instance, the Pew Research Center released a report in June titled “U.S. adults in their 20s and 30s plan to have fewer children than in the past.”
This decline will continue to have a ripple effect if we don’t find new ways to address worker shortages in the decades to come. While robotics, autonomous systems/vehicles, and artificial intelligence can help fill some of the gaps, we will always need people to plan, source, make, and move our goods. And if the lower birth rate trend continues in the U.S., as the CBO predicts, we will have to continue to think “outside the box” for ways to recruit and retain workers.
CSCMP is committed to finding unique ways to attract talent and develop future supply chain leaders. But education is only part of the answer. We also need to expose our incoming workforce to supply chain career opportunities.
So how can your organization or business increase that exposure? That’s a question we all should continue to explore as we plan ahead for our workforce needs. As the CSCMP Talent Center website states, “To truly make a difference in [developing] accessible, knowledgeable supply chain talent, we must work together to expand our future workforce.”
