Orange County faces a critical shortage of skilled workers for some of the best-paid jobs in manufacturing, health care and information technology, according to a report to be released today.

“This is a troubling trend, given that these three are key drivers of future economic development,” Lucy Dunn, president and CEO of the Orange County Business Council, and Bob Bunyan, chairman of the county’s Workforce Investment Board, warned in a letter accompanying the 78-page report.

Despite Orange County’s prosperity, “a growing and persistent skills gap threatens continued success,” they wrote. “Even as unemployment rates continue to drop, employers face rising difficulties in filling positions.”

The document, titled “Bridging the Workforce Gap: What Business Needs to Know,” is the 14th annual indicators survey by the two groups. It will be presented at a joint conference this morning at the Island Hotel in Newport Beach.

Why the skills gap? The report highlights two factors: education and housing.

For one, businesses don’t work closely enough with schools and colleges to communicate their needs, and educational institutions don’t adapt quickly enough. “They don’t always talk the same language,” lamented OCBC economist Wallace Walrod, a chief author of the report.

“The emphasis in K-12 is less on career prep than on college prep,” he added. “But employers are less interested in whether you have a two-year or a four-year degree. They’re interested in what specific software skills you have or what technical health care skills.”

Most future high-paying jobs in Orange County will be in STEM disciplines (science, technology, engineering and math), including biomedical technology, software development, computer gaming, consumer electronics and electronic component manufacturing, the report predicts.

Local colleges are graduating more students with STEM degrees but, as is the case nationally, not enough to meet the demand.

“There’s very little career counseling, especially in K-12,” Walrod said. “It is baffling that more millennials are not going into IT, health care and manufacturing. The word is not getting out that this is where the jobs are.”

Manufacturing has a particular image problem. “Folks think of assembly lines and smokestacks,” Walrod said. “But in most factories, you are working with robots and technology.”

Private sector unions, which traditionally ran apprenticeship programs, have shrunk dramatically in recent years. Orange County should assist businesses to develop their own training programs, the report suggests.

The county’s over-65 population is projected to soar over the next several decades as the relative proportion of other age groups shrinks. That trend is driving an acute need for health care professionals from low-wage home health care aides to well-paid registered nurses.

Worker shortages are beginning to boost wages in the harder-to-fill health care jobs, even as pay in the overall job market has stagnated.

One key challenge: Good jobs require fluent English. In Orange County, 26 percent of students are classified as “English-learners,” more than the statewide average of 23 percent.

In the Anaheim City School District, near Disneyland, the county’s largest private employer, 60 percent of students lack fluency, according to the report.

Businesses should promote preschool education, school boards should recruit STEM-trained teachers, and Latino and Asian parents should get more help to boost their children’s English skills, the report concludes.

Meanwhile, even when students do graduate with STEM skills, a dire housing shortage, and the resulting high cost of renting or owning, is driving many of them out of Orange County.

“There’s an entrenched not-in-my-backyard issue at the local level,” Walrod said. “Anaheim and Irvine are building housing, but there’s a lack of political will among most planning commissions and local elected officials.”

Orange County rents have risen so high that a worker needs to make $24.67 an hour to rent a typical one-bedroom apartment this year, the report noted, citing calculations by the National Association of Realtors.

Los Angeles and San Francisco counties are raising their minimum wage levels above the statewide floor of $9 an hour, partly to help with high housing costs. No such move has begun in Orange County.

Contact the writer: mroosevelt@ocregister.com; Twitter @MargotRoosevelt