Predictive Modeling of U.S. Transportation Workforce Diversity Trends: A Study of Human Capital Recruitment and Retention in Complex Environments

Successful delivery of transportation projects requires extensive level of effort spent by departments of transportation skilled employees. Although these human resources are very valuable assets for transportation projects, most state agencies face numerous challenges in recruitment and retention of motivated and diverse employees. Earlier studies concluded that recent college graduates are less attracted to be hired by state agencies as the salary range would be less competitive compared to the same positions in private companies. Therefore, the aim of this study is to investigate and assess the recruitment and retention trends of transportation workforce across different U.S. regions. For this reason, this research project utilized U.S. transportation workforce demographic information which has been nationally collected and published. The used database includes several demographical aspects of transportation workforce including: region, gender, age, disability status, ethnicity/race, years of experience, and supervisory role. In this study, the association of transportation workforce age with the transportation organization responsibilities across various regions were studied and analyzed. Furthermore, gender-based distribution of transportation workforce controlling for other variables was investigated and presented. It was concluded that the proportion of male to female employees in engineering positions is only associated with their race/ethnicity and year of service. It was also found that the gender disparity in engineering positions is higher in the White group than the African/American group controlling for region, year of service, disability status, and role (supervisory versus nonsupervisory). The outcome of this study helps transportation decision makers to incorporate appropriate policies into their human capital development strategic plans. The findings of this study will also enable state transportation agencies to diversify their active workforce through implementation of recruitment and retention practical approaches.