A familiar story is unfolding in nearly every state. Most legislatures are currently in session, and lawmakers are agonizing over cuts to state education budgets.
By now politicians are well versed in anecdotal evidence on the importance of investing in education — from early development classes through college. But what about definitive numbers on the return [...]

More and more, and certainly in light of the current recession, there is a need to apply up-to-date information on local, state, regional, and even national economies to training, curriculum, and skills development. So, in this brief paper we want to show how labor market information (or information on industries, occupations, and demographics) can be [...]

A new report from the National Center of O*NET Development chronicles how O*NET data has been used successfully by government agencies, educational institutions, and other organizations throughout the country and internationally. Several of the organizations highlighted are EMSI clients or partners, including the Newton (IA) Transformation Council, the WIB of Southwest Missouri, and Tennessee Valley [...]

The Kauffman Foundation’s recent study, “The Anatomy of Entrepreneurs,” offers some interesting insights into the backgrounds and make-up of entrepreneurs. One of the major conclusions is that most entrepreneurs are middle-class and well-educated.
“The commonly held belief that entrepreneurs are young college students working out of their dorms is simply wrong,” says author [Vivek] Wadhwa, the [...]

A report released this week as a joint effort by four organizations shows that workers lack the basic and applied skills that employers need. A survey of 217 employers by the American Society of Training and Development (ASTD), the Conference Board, Corporate Voices for Working Families, and the Society for Human Resource Management analyzed employer-based [...]

A new report, called “Charting a Path: An Exploration of the Statewide Career Pathway Efforts in Arkansas, Kentucky, Oregon, Washington, and Wisconsin,” has been put out by the Seattle Jobs Initiative. Supported by the Working Poor Families Project and Seattle Office of Economic Development, the study defines career pathways as: “… a series of connected [...]

A couple of weeks ago we linked to a neat report put out by the O*NET Resource Center, called “Greening the World of Work.” The report used O*NET codes to establish a starting point for understanding green jobs.
In order to run labor market analysis, link to staffing industries, and establish trends over time, we have [...]

The Kauffman Foundation has released two reports that reinforce the value of entrepreneurs, particularly in hard economic times. The first, entitled “The Economic Future Just Happened,” goes in depth on the relationship between recessions and entrepreneurial activity.
The study found that more than half of the companies on the 2009 Fortune 500 list were launched during [...]

Here’s a new report from the Seedco Policy Center that goes in depth on linking workforce development and economic development. As the executive summary mentions, the report “details opportunities—and cautions against pitfalls—
commonly encountered by those attempting to link two complementary but very different systems.”
The study does an admirable job outlining the different natures, purposes, and [...]

Q. EMSI’s data is different from data I get from my state’s labor market information (LMI) agency. Which is right?
A. Actually, this is not a case of one being “right” and one being “wrong,” because the data sets have different sources, purposes, and coverage.
First, let’s clarify that EMSI actually offers two different data sets: “EMSI [...]