ACWORTH — A panel of workforce and education experts said Thursday that there needs to be a collaborative effort among students, parents, educational leaders and businesses to create more employment in Georgia and fill the growing void of unskilled workers.

“We’re at a unique time in our economy,” said Glenn Rasco, vice president of community and economic development at Marietta-based Chattahoochee Technical College. “Industry people are saying ‘We can’t find skilled workers.’ If we can find out what those industries need, we can provide training and skills and get those jobs filled.”

Added state Department of Labor Commissioner Mark Butler: “Because of this recession, our workforce needs have changed dramatically.”

Thursday’s event, hosted by the Cobb/Cherokee and Cartersville/Bartow Employer Committees, was at the North Metro campus of CTC in Acworth. Rasco and Butler, along with Bartow County Schools Superintendent Dr. John Harper; Tricia Pridemore, executive director of the Governor’s Office of Work Force Development; and Dr. Josephine Reed-Taylor, deputy commissioner of the Technical College System of Georgia, answered questions from the crowd of approximately 80 attendees. The moderator was Robert Banta, an attorney and the co-director of the State Legislative Affairs Committee of the State Council of the Society of Human Resource Management.

The topic on everyone’s tongues was the need to get more children interested in subjects such as science, math and technology so that they will carry those interests into college and fill the need for skilled trade labor, such as helping to build Lockheed Martin Aeronautics airplanes or becoming a welder. Employees having the skills to fill those jobs have declined because of the abundance of students in liberal arts majors such as sociology who do not have a defined career path for post-graduation, the panel said.

“One concern I have seen in public education is that all children are told a four-year degree is best, but we’re finding that in 2012, the workforce has changed,” Harper said. “A lot of our children today don’t want to be in a four-year school. But not everyone needs to get a four-year degree. We need to be going out to companies to see what jobs they need, so we can train our children to get those jobs.”

Additionally, Harper said education itself needs to change to be more engaging for students in order to have more students graduating from high school and applying their interests into valuable careers.

“Most drop out because they are (not interested) in what’s happening in the classroom,” Harper said. “We’re sitting in front of them and delivering information to them the same way we always have. If you went to sleep 20 years ago and woke up today, you’d see we’re doing the same thing. If we continue to stand and deliver, we’re going to lose our children.”

Beyond working more at the education level, Butler said those on the unemployment line as well as companies looking for jobs are going to be served better this year with changes to the Department of Labor’s website that will make information more readily available and more efficient.

One of those initiatives is that in about nine months, everyone on unemployment in Georgia will have to post a resume to the DOL website for employers to see. Butler said he also hopes to make job searching and posting easier, and to continue a program that is having counselors target the students who are most likely to drop out and giving them hope, attention and guidance.

Reed-Taylor said the cost for getting a GED is going to rise, because the tests are switching from being done on paper to being done on a computer.

Pridemore said her department and Gov. Nathan Deal continue to promote the Work Ready program, which assesses workers’ skills and helps them to find a job within those skills. Additionally, Pridemore said she and the governor will go on a 13-stop tour around Georgia beginning Feb. 6 to promote Deal’s Go Build Georgia initiative, which is aimed at promoting skilled labor.

Pridemore said 16,500 skilled trade jobs would become available this year.