U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar on Tuesday advocated for policy changes aimed at boosting Minnesota’s millennial workforce and said meaningful change is within reach as the nation grapples with a shortage of skilled workers.

Minnesota in particular is staring down a projected shortfall of 100,000 workers over the next five years. The state’s sinking unemployment rate and shrinking labor force foreshadow a sluggish economy unless employers do what they can to plug the gaps.

“We have a lower unemployment rate than a lot of metro areas, and that means we need to continue recruiting young people,” Klobuchar, a Democrat, said at a Minneapolis summit she organized to discuss millennial workforce issues. “That means millennials.”

But broader market conditions in many cases block millennials — the largest and best-educated generation in U.S. history, according to the White House — from the employers desperate to hire them. The strain has fueled bipartisan efforts to knock down the barriers threatening to hold back the workforce for the long term.

“It’s gotten harder to navigate a way to financial security for this generation,” said Jen Mishory, executive director of Young Invincibles, a Washington, D.C., research group focused on millennials. “Today’s workforce, like today’s student population, is vastly different and we need different policies.”

Crippling student loan debt — estimated at more than $1.2 trillion nationwide, according to Experian — restricts millennials’ job options. Minnesota graduates carry more than $31,000 in debt on average, among the highest loads in the country, according to the Institute for College Access and Success.

Restoring higher education budgets to pre-recession levels would help alleviate the strain, especially after colleges and universities across the country dramatically increased tuition costs over the past three decades, Klobuchar said. Down the line, such action would open options for those joining the workforce. “It’s difficult for kids to decide what kind of career they’re going to go into if they’re going to have this debt,” she said.

Aside from that, a lack of young people pursuing skilled trades like manufacturing and welding limits the pool of available workers in industries that need workers the most, including construction. To help bridge the gap, Klobuchar urged more support for apprenticeship programs.

The Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development already builds partnerships between employers, community colleges and trade schools. More trade-based employers than ever are also seeking to recruit young workers as early as middle school. But a more focused effort could yield big results, especially as employers strapped for workers are increasingly willing to help cover school costs.

Klobuchar pushed for more programming modeled after countries like Germany and Switzerland, where it’s common for high school students to ease their way into the workforce with apprenticeships before graduation.

But even institutions that have strong training programs, including Hennepin Technical College, face bigger struggles that hold back progress in plugging workforce gaps. Like other two-year institutions, Hennepin Technical faces a year-to-year attrition rate as high as 50 percent in part because of costs. “We need a commitment from our employers to work with our communities and redevelop them,” Hennepin Technical College President Merrill Irving Jr. said at the summit, singling out tuition help and engagement with students as early as middle school as keys to solving the worker shortage.

In addition, Klobuchar called for a better bridge to retirement for millennial workers who increasingly take on part-time jobs or shorter-term work that often prevents them from saving for retirement. Especially as pensions dissipate and debt prevents early retirement savings, the economy is a challenge.

Earlier this month, the U.S. Treasury Department launched a program that allows people earning less than $131,000 a year to independently opt into a no-fee retirement savings program that they could eventually roll over to a private-sector account — a move aimed at fostering financial security for young workers.

But government intervention will only go so far.

Lasting change hinges on private-sector efforts to propel the workforce and boost millennials’ place in it. Tuition reimbursement and on-the-job training programs pioneered by the employers themselves could help alleviate debt, open options and draw in young workers, Klobuchar said.

“It’s not just the government and us learning it,” she said. “It’s companies learning it.”