To raise awareness of job opportunities for Chicago-area displaced workers in the midst of the deep recession, a consortium of nine regional workforce boards has released a study that emphasizes the continuing demand for middle-skill workers. “While policymakers continue to focus on the need for high-skill workers,” the report states, “the need for middle-skill workers [...]

The Michigan Works! (Berrien-Cass-Van Buren) workforce board has unveiled a study detailing the impacts of the auto manufacturing decline in southwest Michigan, particularly its tri-county service region. Playing off a 2009 Center for Automotive Research report, Michigan Works! used EMSI labor market data and survey information to 1) identify area manufacturers that produce parts for [...]

The California-based Centers of Excellence has released a new study entitled “Understanding the Green Economy: A Community College Perspective.”  A lot of work has gone into this study, and the paper delivers on some pretty serious goals:

To provide definitions for green jobs and green firms to allow for consistent use and understanding
Illustrate various scenarios [...]

The Texas Workforce Commission has produced an occasional paper that delves into the problems of quantifying and thus analyzing the  “green collar” labor force. While policy makers are increasingly touting these kinds of jobs, few people have taken the trouble to define what the term “green collar” includes, what knowledge/skills its occupations require, and how [...]

This study, “Economic Contribution of America’s Community and Technical Colleges” (PDF link), was authored by CCbenefits (now EMSI) in 2004, and showcases the socioeconomic impact model (SEIM) framework used in EMSI’s college studies.
The analysis is based on a sample of 262 colleges in 14 states, representing roughly one-third of the current total enrollment in community [...]

Bruce Corrie, Dean of the College of Business at Concordia University, has released a report that attempts to quantify the “ethnic capital” of Liberian immigrants in the US as a whole and the state of Minnesota in particular.
Though a small community, Liberians in the United States and Minnesota have a significant impact on the national [...]

EMSI economists have completed a new study titled “Identification of Knowledge and Innovation Clusters: A GIS Application of Concentration, Co-Existence, and Correlation.” The paper, which was presented at the Pacific Northwest Regional Economic Conference, identifies regions with a high level of high-tech industry clustering, human capital, and innovation.
These regional “knowledge clusters” were identified using several [...]

An EMSI gap analysis report is being used to inform a new Master Plan for Northwest Arkansas Community College in Bentonville, Arkansas. NWACC has reviewed input from multiple sources, including the EMSI report, and the consensus appears to be that the college needs to create a permanent presence in a neighboring county as well as [...]

Timely data and analysis from EMSI were critical for a recent gap analysis report performed for Kingsborough Community College in New York. The final report was created by EMSI’s partner Workforce Strategy Center, a New York based nonprofit, in the summer of 2007 and was recently released on their web site.
The report focused on tourism [...]

Everyone knows that manufacturing is on the decline both nationwide and in states like Ohio, right? Well, not exactly—the story is actually much more complicated.
It is true that Ohio’s manufacturing sector saw a loss of some 93,000 jobs (about 10 percent) from 2002 to 2007, even as other portions of the economy were pulling out [...]