NAST president Wooden to focus on public finance workforce

National Association of State Treasurers President Shawn Wooden is making the future of public finance as a profession a top priority for his tenure, following the findings of the organization’s Public Finance Workforce study released last year.

Wooden said in a NAST Thought Leader column Thursday that his first goal as president is to “follow up on the study’s findings by providing valuable resources for more than 11,000 state treasury and network employees across the country, [and] delivering a viable path forward to engage a new generation of public finance professionals.”

The September 2021 national study, which was compiled in collaboration with software analytics company Burning Glass Technologies with support from the Wells Fargo Foundation, revealed that the public finance workforce is aging. The majority of current workers are more than 45 years old.

And while the study found that the public sector offers wider access to jobs for a wider range of employees, data also showed that the public sector offers fewer job opportunities than the private sector.

As a result, the study predicted a “domino effect of retirements” stemming from upward transitions of mid-to-late career level workers. Those workers would likely take the place of retiring workers — leaving vacancies in lower-to-mid level roles.

Those and other findings were based on proprietary data from job posting and social profile databases as well as information from the U.S. Census Bureau’s yearly American Community Survey.

Since the study’s release, NAST has stressed the importance of recruiting and engaging a new generation of public finance workers who are equipped to fill those roles. Wooden reiterated that importance in his statement Thursday.

“This groundbreaking study raised many concerns, with serious workforce shortage issues being experienced by state, county, and municipal governments,” Wooden said, adding, “As we look towards the future of the public finance workforce, we need to focus on implementing internships and career pathways, along with diversity and corporate engagement strategies.”

Wooden, who was sworn in as NAST president last week, also looks forward to focusing on issues involving diversity, equity and inclusion, which he describes as keys to creating “sustainable long-term value” for states.

“As state treasurers, we can play an important role in ensuring our economy works for everyone,” Wooden said, noting that research shows that “diversity of thought and perspective leads to better investment returns, better business strategies, and stronger organizations as a whole.”

Notably, NAST’s public workforce study concluded that the public finance sector is relatively diverse and a majority female industry.

For example, of all workers across city, county and state-level public finance offices, the study revealed that 52% are female compared to the 47% of females employed across the United States workforce.

Similarly, in analyzing race and ethnicity in the public finance sector, the study found that public sector offices tend to employ more African Americans and white individuals than the national average of those races employed in the total U.S. workforce.

The public finance sector employed 15% of African Americans versus the 11% employed in the total U.S. workforce. White workers were employed in the public finance sector at a rate of 67%, but at 63% in the total U.S. workforce.

From this and related data, the study surmised that “the ubiquitous nature of [the] public finance sector enables the hiring of a diverse workforce.”

For NAST this year, Wooden said that diversity, equity and inclusion efforts will include “establishing the internal infrastructure necessary to help everyone thrive with the creation of [a] NAST diversity, equity, and inclusion ad hoc committee.”