Conference Agenda

Critical infrastructure security depends on the maturity of the state and local cyber-physical systems (CPS) workforce. As telecommunications, water, energy, public health, and transportation facilities adopt Internet-of-Things (IoT) and operational technologies (OT), the security of these systems underpins the national supply chain, communications, disaster response, and access to basic services such as water, electricity and heat, and much of it is managed at the state level. Variation in workforce capacity across states therefore becomes a determinant of national resilience and of the security of critical digital infrastructure.

This article presents an exploratory, state-level study of how workforce capacity relates to infrastructure need across the United States, with particular attention to telecommunications. The research team built a state-year panel covering the 50 states and the District of Columbia from 2010 through 2024, drawing on the U.S. Census Bureau, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the Bureau of Economic Analysis. The analysis is descriptive.

Results of this pilot study suggest that telecommunications specialization is positively associated with measured capacity, while utilities specialization is negatively associated with it. Notably, four states (Arkansas, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and West Virginia) combine low measured capacity with high relative need under every definition tested. The patterns found in this study frame telecommunications resilience as a cross-sector workforce problem rather than a telecommunication sector specific issue. The article documents the absence of a federal statistical product isolating CPS and OT roles. The article also offers recommendations for state and federal interventions as well as an ongoing research direction.