GROWING THE FUTURE MINING WORKFORCE THROUGH AN INNOVATION MINDSET

Almost all sectors of the economy are facing long-term labor availability challenges. With increasing focus and need for domestic mineral resource development, creating the next generation workforce that supports the raw materials sector in the United States will require creating a meaningful and attractive occupation space. Building that workforce is challenged by a perception of mining as an archaic discipline and industry. The raw materials sector is in transformation, and we need to embrace and promote the innovation mindset that represents the emerging future nature of minerals work as well as the engaging and meaningful employment pathways this sector offers. A critical change needed, and one that is showing progress in Europe, has been to shift the reference to this sector from the archaic “mining industry” terminology to the “raw materials sector”, making a key variance between old and new perceptions and directions. In Europe, these efforts have allowed the sector to plug effectively into the discussion of circular economy and the dynamics of material efficiencies, recycling, and reuse. Additionally, the contemporaneous onset of the pandemic and rapid technological advances accelerated the application of AI and IoT which is substantively changing the nature of work in the raw materials sector. This is especially evident in upstream operations where AI is reducing the amount of data wrangling while expanding opportunities for geologists to focus on the science needed to address tougher problems. We explore a few case studies of these impacts. We also touch on other examples from the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 program that are examples of innovative thinking in raw materials that are opening new resources and reducing the social and environmental impacts of mining. Some of these projects have yielded commercial operations while others are the first step on long-term efforts to access resources in extreme environments. To make the raw materials sector a competitive space for attracting both sufficient numbers and high caliber talent, there is a need to reframe of the critical skills required for future employment in this new environment and to change the dialog about how minerals are extracted and used.