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EMSI has had the privilege of working with Ed Morrison of the Purdue Center for Regional Development on a number of projects, the latest a comprehensive workforce competency study for the Regional Workforce Alliance of Southeastern Wisconsin. The finishing touches have been put on the major project, and you can find more about the ground-breaking [...]

Davis Jenkins and Thomas Bailey, both from the Community College Research Center housed at Columbia University, focus in this Inside Higher Ed article on how community colleges need to improve to meet President Obama’s goal for five million more two-year graduates by 2020. Instead of just worrying about increased enrollment, the authors say retention and [...]

The National Career Pathways Network and Institute for a Competitive Workforce, affiliated with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, have released a new report that details successful career pathways models across the country. The biggest successes, the report points out, come from areas where employers, education providers, and community organizations form productive partnerships. At a time [...]

Over the past several months EMSI has partnered with the Alliance for Excellent Education in developing a model that measures the economic benefits of decreased high school dropout rates. The model was unveiled recently by the Alliance (see the press release here) and highlighted by The Detroit News as a way to help solve Detroit’s [...]

Here’s a very informative, in-depth look at community colleges in Virginia and their work with local businesses and data providers like EMSI to come up with programs that make sense for their regions. The article comes from Heather B. Hayes of Virginiabusiness.com. Based on information from the first week of classes, the Virginia Community College [...]

U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu has announced $144 million in (ARRA) awards for the electric power sector. This includes $44 million for “state and public utility commissions” and $100 million for “smart grid workforce training programs.” The workforce training program dollars are aimed at supporting “the development of training programs at utilities, colleges, universities, and [...]

Here’s a neat data visualization chart that shows a stacked time series of occupations and their percentage of the U.S. labor force since 1850. Some of the occupation titles are out of date, but it’s worth checking out. One of the cooler occupations to examine is Farmers — which has gone from 44.7 percent of [...]

Here is an article by Time Magazine that does a great job illustrating the “ripple effect” concept. The article points out how even one job loss in a well-established industry such as manufacturing can quickly lead to additional losses in local purchases (restaurants), tax revenue (government), and savings. “In an unhealthy economy, a single lost [...]

Earlier this week the BLS released its report on metro area unemployment, and the numbers weren’t terribly encouraging. Every one of the 372 MSAs included had higher unemployment rates than the year before. What’s more, there are 19 metro areas with at least 15% unemployment, led by El Centro, Calif., at 30.2%. The encouraging news? [...]

Baby boomers, the segment of America’s population between ages 55-64, are showing the highest rate of business formation, according to Kauffman Foundation CEO Carl Schramm. Check out Schramm’s thoughts on these late-to-blossom entrepreneurs in the CNBC video below. Also check out this Q&A with Schramm about the silver lining of recessions.

As The Wall Street Journal pointed out last month, economics blogs have seen a rapid rise in popularity with the current economic conditions being so volatile. Some of the top econ bloggers featured by the WSJ convened recently at the behest of the Kauffman Foundation. Below is a video highlighting the bloggers’ forum.

This video posted at the Kauffman Foundation Growthology web site gives an insightful description of the difference between so-called “missionary” entrepreneurs and mercenaries. The short lesson is given by John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins, who dishes out several good nuggets of information during this brief clip: “An entrepreneur does more than anyone thinks possible with [...]

The New York Times has published a special section devoted to continuing education, with a range of articles on sustainability training to white-collar workers heading back in droves to community colleges. You can check out the section here. Here’s an excerpt from the lead article on choosing the right program, including a bit about the [...]

Inc. Magazine has named Economic Modeling Specialists Inc. (EMSI) to its list of the 500 fastest-growing private companies in America, a first-time distinction for the economics firm. EMSI, the only Idaho-based company on the list, climbed into the top 500 (at No. 409) after two consecutive years of being recognized on the Inc. 5,000 list. [...]

Wausau, Wisconsin, is in the midst of what local leaders hope is a shift from watching young people leave the community to attracting them with new cultural amenities. One part of Wausau’s economic development plan has been analyzing demographic figures from EMSI to determine the projected growth or decline of key age cohorts for the [...]

The Bureau of Labor Statistics released its July Employment Situation (found here) — and, as noted by Felix Salmon here the employment numbers and unemployment percentages went down. His take: “My feeling is that it’s far too early to say that unemployment has stopped rising, and that clearly nobody believes employment has stopped falling. We’re [...]

Which parts of the United States will recover most rapidly from the drawn-out recession? Moody’s Economy.com has released a study that estimates the strongest future job growth will come in Colorado, Texas and three Northwest states: Washington, Idaho, and Oregon. In the case of the northwestern states, the reason they got picked is because of [...]