North Carolina employers facing an impending worker shortage, especially in rural areas, are hoping a state push to train more young people, especially through community colleges, pays off.
In 2019, North Carolina set a goal to have two million 25- to 44-year-old residents with degrees or industry-recognized credentials in the state by 2030. The clock is ticking. With less than four years from the self-imposed deadline, the state has added less than half of the additional qualified young people it needs — and still has about 277,000 more to go.
Leaders at the helm of the effort say the community college system has been a vital part of working toward the goal, as many schools have introduced programs to aid in student success in the classroom, degree attainment and connecting students and job-seekers with employers in rural areas.
Although based in rural, local communities, those ventures have attracted statewide attention and beyond, including from the likes of the Aspen Institute.
Community college push: two million by 2030?President of the N.C.Rural Center, a private nonprofit organization, Patrick Woodie told Carolina Public Press that education and workforce development has become the organization’s top concern for rural North Carolinians. That will look different in each community, he said, but the need for healthcare and manufacturing workers is a “common denominator.”
It didn’t always seem to him that educational opportunities in the state aligned with these needs. But in the last several years, he has felt that divide close “in a powerful way” as education leaders have begun to emphasize workforce alignment. He attributes much of that to the work of one initiative — myFutureNC.
The “attainment goal” of two million by 2030 grew out of a recommendation from myFutureNC, a nonprofit organization connecting policymakers to education, business and philanthropy. The idea received bipartisan support in 2019.
“Their work in particular has helped all the partners that make up that workforce ecosystem focus, single-mindedly, on this overall idea of ‘We’ve got to get every working-age adult to higher levels of educational attainment,’ ” Woodie said. “That’s our big challenge.”
The state legislature recently upped its commitment to workforce development by funding the Workforce Act of 2026, allocating more than $8 million to support the initiatives that are a key focus of myFutureNC, including work-based learning, career planning technology, workforce development grants and expanded pathways for transfer students.
MyFutureNC describes the attainment goal as a snapshot of North Carolina residents, aged 25 to 44, at a given point in time, rather than a cumulative count of individuals over the years. So as the population changes, so does who is included in the current figure — someone who turns 45 ages out, while those that turn 25 age in. Similarly, as North Carolina gains and loses residents, the current status is adjusted accordingly.
At the time of the legislation, North Carolina had about 1.45 million credentialed people in the age bracket, up from 1.3 million in 2016. Less than four years out from 2030, myFutureNC tracks the current figure at just over 1.72 million, with a little more than 277,000 to go. It uses data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey and an estimate of non-degree credential attainment to determine who gets counted toward the goal.
While there’s more work to be done, president of myFutureNC Cecilia Holden said, the state has made significant progress. The organization uses nearly 20 performance indicators to track progress, ranging from pre-K enrollment to chronic absenteeism to FAFSA completion, all with individual goals of their own.
North Carolina is 6% away from its goal of a 95% high school graduation rate, which would make it the highest in the South, according to myFutureNC. The percentage of North Carolina residents aged 25-44 participating in the labor force is just 2% away from its 86% goal. The state has already exceeded its goals for first-year persistence rate and postsecondary completion rate at two-year public institutions.
Other indicators face larger hurdles, particularly at the K-12 level. Just 33% of North Carolina students in grades 3-8 earned a “college-and-career-ready score” of a four or five on the end-of-grade reading exam, despite its goal of 73%. On the end-of-grade math exam, 40% earned a four or five. The goal is 86%.
The current percentage of 18-24 year olds enrolled in a postsecondary institution sits at 40%, with the goal of 47% in sight. Within the overall percentage, non-metropolitan rural counties had the second highest enrollment rates in 2024, although rates were lowest in rural counties within a metropolitan area. The state needs nearly 77,000 more young people to enroll to meet the goal by 2030.
While four-year universities bring complementary strengths, community colleges have played a crucial role in the success so far — of the 58 in North Carolina, 46 are rural-serving — as they often provide a more affordable and geographically advantageous option for individuals to receive training close to home, Holden said.
“Community colleges are uniquely positioned to provide affordable, geographically accessible and flexible education and training, often responding quickly to local workforce needs,” she told CPP.
Developing the local workforceSurry Community College, based in the small town of Dobson near the eastern edge of the Blue Ridge Mountains, has tutoring centers in fellow Surry County towns Mount Airy, Pilot Mountain and Elkin, as well as Yadkinville in Yadkin County.
Surry-Yadkin Works was named by myFutureNC as the 2026 Champion for Attainment for its contributions to the 2030 goal. The organization partners with the college and local businesses to connect students with employers in manufacturing, healthcare, education and other fields, offering pre-apprenticeships to local high schoolers and postsecondary apprenticeships to young workers, many enrolled at SCC.
The program, independent from myFutureNC but consciously working toward the attainment goal, is funded by both counties’ commissioners.
Around the time the program started, executive director of Surry-Yadkin Works Crystal Folger-Hawks said businesses around Surry and Yadkin counties faced the retirement of up to 10,000 employees in the next 10 years. They wondered how they would fill the gap.
Meanwhile, local students who wanted stable, well-paying jobs felt like they would have to head to urban areas, she said. Research by the NC Rural Center shows the number of young adults continues to fall in rural areas, while soaring in urban and suburban counties.
The NC Rural Center found rural North Carolina is aging at a faster rate than the whole of the state, with western and northeastern counties being the oldest areas, and research shows the greater share of older adults a county has, the lower their labor force participation is. The center’s research suggests rural counties are dealing with the challenge of an aging community more than suburban and urban North Carolina, it said.
Instead of young workers fleeing communities they’ve known their whole lives and rural businesses having to recruit from urban areas — a challenge in and of itself, Folger-Hawks noted — Surry-Yadkin Works educates both parties on the opportunities available in their own backyard.
Sometimes that means taking classes at Surry Community College alongside their high school coursework. A high-schooler interested in welding, for example, would likely have to take classes the college offers to help prepare for the pre-apprenticeship.
Other times, students graduate from high school and seek degrees from the college or a four-year school elsewhere in the state. In those cases, there is the hope that students will return to the area to put their degree to use in the local community. Based on what she’s been hearing, Folger-Hawks said, they are doing s