Economic Modeling Specialists Inc. (EMSI) is pleased to announce a new partnership with global publishing company John Wiley & Sons to support Wiley Pathways, a new line of texts from the Wiley Higher Education division. The partnership will allow both companies to better serve community, technical, and career colleges and their students with high-quality, flexible curricula aligned to high-demand jobs.

“This is a great example of how EMSI’s integrated data can help both public- and private-sector organizations make informed, strategic decisions,” says EMSI CEO Andrew Crapuchettes. “We’re very pleased to be working with the Wiley Pathways team, and we believe our partnership will bring great value to their customers and ours.”

Under the agreement, EMSI will produce co-branded regional reports focusing on the labor market demand for occupations linked to Wiley Pathways curricula, which cover four major fields: Business, Emergency Management, Health Care Management, and Information Technology. The reports will inform colleges about opportunities for developing, expanding, or supporting related programs. Students will benefit by getting a detailed picture of the local, state, and national job market for the knowledge and skills they can acquire in those programs.

For previously posted customer snapshots, click here.

People who are new to EMSI’s Strategic Advantage web-based analysis suite can sometimes get lost in its bewildering array of data sets, features, and terminology–and lose sight of its time-saving, productivity-boosting capabilities. That’s why we’ve collected real-world examples of how our clients use Strategic Advantage to become more efficient and more informed while saving their organizations money and leveraging additional resources. [Note: The following names and case studies are used by permission for informational purposes. They do not necessarily constitute an explicit or implicit endorsement of EMSI by the people or organizations listed.]

Workforce Investment & Development

David Blumenthal, Workforce Associate for Research and Development
Center of Workforce Innovations, Inc., Indiana
The need for accessible and accurate data is one constant in the ever-changing landscape of workforce development. To meet the Center of Workforce Innovations’ needs for occupation, industry, and demographic data, David Blumenthal uses Strategic Advantage. Its broad scope helps him perform multi-county research like the “State of the Workforce” report for Northwest Indiana, while the ability to drill down to ZIP code data helps him with detailed reports for individual companies. David says he likes to use Strategic Advantage because “its user-friendly layout provides me the capability to shift between occupations and industries, with the ability to sort, filter, or trim any report I choose.” For David and many more workforce developers like him, Strategic Advantage has become an integral part in the strategic planning process.

Higher Education

Tom Prendergast, Director of Institutional Research
North Central State College, Ohio
Tom Prendergast uses Strategic Advantage (SA) for successful grant writing. Recently, he and North Central State College used SA to support the application and subsequent gain of a Regional Innovation Grant (RIG) for his region. Armed with data on the aging workforce, dislocated workers, and the increasing demand for health care services, North Central State College and the other regional partners were able to prove their case for funding with conclusive data-driven findings on their region. Tom also used SA data to support his applications for two other recent grant successes, which brought 1 million dollars to the region for bioscience research and workforce training. Currently, Tom is focusing on the implementation phase of the RIG, and he is working closely with an EMSI consulting team to formulate a plan for transitioning laid-off workers into two focus industry sectors.

Nancy Benziger Brown, Dean of Workforce Development
Walter State Community College Center for Workforce Development, Morristown TN
Nancy Brown used EMSI data to help win a $1.95 Million Community-Based Job Training Grant. In order to do this, she used Strategic Advantage to provide data on: local emerging industries, demographics, and growth rates for several different occupations. This data helped establish need, as the per capita income was below poverty level compared to the state and nation. By identifying need and focusing on Advanced Manufacturing, especially Automotive Parts Manufacturing, Nancy and her team received the CBJTG to develop training, purchase state-of-the-art equipment and begin a career center on campus.

Nancy Ness, Tech Prep Coordinator, Selland College of Applied Technology
Boise State University, Idaho
Nancy is currently using Strategic Advantage to support a data-driven framework for program planning and program justification. With a new Southwest Idaho community college set to open in 2009, Nancy and the college program managers have been using occupation data from SA to guide program offerings. As the infrastructure for this community college is created, occupation data from SA will be used to evaluate the demand for the occupations that these programs train for. In the past, Nancy has used SA to help Southwest Idaho high schools meet Perkins IV accountability requirements and for grant writing for Boise State University Selland College of Applied Technology.

Terry Newman, Director, Contract and Community Education
Gavilian College, California
Terry Newman understands the power of detailed regional data. Gavilian College is a recent recipient of a Rural Opportunities Studies Grant, and the focus of the grant is on a rural county where detailed and up-to-date data is hard to come by. Terry is using Strategic Advantage ZIP code data to better understand this underserved region. In looking at workforce projections for this county, she has unearthed several growing occupations that went unnoticed previous to the detailed analysis. With this knowledge, Gavilian College can proactively address the competencies workers will need in order to remain in the region. This analysis will become the basis for new programs in the future. Terry’s example of data-driven regional analysis proves the importance for utilizing detailed data to address the workforce and education needs of rural communities.

EMSI’s data, modeling, and consulting services played a key role in a report released today by Bruce Corrie, professor of economics and director of the Strategic Business Design Institute at Concordia University in St. Paul, Minnesota.

The report, titled “Ethnic Capital and Minnesota’s Future: Mexican Americans in Minnesota,”  examines the consumer spending power, entrepreneurial capital, productive capital, cultural capital, and other ways that Mexican-Americans benefit the Minnesota economy. The report finds that Mexican-Americans have consumer power of $1 billion, pay $283 million in personal taxes, and have large impacts on the state’s industries and labor market.

This case study describes how EMSI (then CCbenefits) helped inform the Arkansas Career Pathways Initiative with regional labor market reports.

The Arkansas CPI is a groundbreaking program that helps high-risk, low-income adults gain entry into careers with opportunity for upward mobility. Graduates are filling in-demand jobs in regional growth industries while gaining independence from public assistance.

Read the case study (PDF): Informing Career Pathways in Arkansas (Case Study)

With the advent of EMSI’s affordable, easy-to-use economic modeling tools, many more people are able to conduct economic impact analyses without an extensive background in economics. This document describes some of the basic pitfalls that more inexperienced researchers should avoid when conducting an economic impact study. The three primary pitfalls are:

1.  Expressing impacts in terms of sales rather than income
2. Ignoring the “with and without” principle (also known as the “Broken Window Principle”)
3. Failing to account for general equilibrium effects

Click here to view/download the full document (PDF): Economic Impact Analysis: Common Pitfalls

In this whitepaper, EMSI explains the importance of  labor market analysis for businesses, site selectors, and economic development professionals. The paper covers types of key information needed and the challenges of local labor market research using public sources, and some basic features of EMSI’s Strategic Advantage web-based system that make it the top labor market analysis solution for many policy professionals, researchers, and consultants. An appendix reviews the most commonly used public data sources.

Read the full whitepaper (PDF):  Labor Market Analysis for Site Selection

Update: This whitepaper has been expanded — read the latest version.

After last year’s placement on the Inc. 5000 list, Economic Modeling Specialists Inc. has been recognized as one of America’s fastest-growing private companies.

EMSI’s achievement was recently publicized in Forbes magazine on the “Awards Report” page produced by Dallas-based Chorley Publishing.

“We’d like to thank all of our customers for their loyalty, feedback, and support, which has made our company what it is today,” said EMSI CEO Andrew Crapuchettes. “Our customers have actively informed the rapid development of our products and services, helping us make the maze of socioeconomic data easily accessible to the decision makers who need it most.”

Noted regional economist M. Henry Robison founded the company in 1987 as Robison & Associates, which then became EMSI in 1995. EMSI initially specialized in building custom regional economic models, and began producing its own integrated data set to support them. In 2001, Robison and his colleague Kjell Christophersen formed CCbenefits Inc., an economic consulting firm specializing in providing impact studies and regional planning data for community and technical colleges. In 2007, the two companies officially merged under the EMSI name and now provide a diverse portfolio of economic data, software, and consulting solutions to state and local agencies, colleges and universities, workforce development boards, economic development councils, consultants, and private sector clients.

EMSI’s data-driven socioeconomic impact studies for colleges have been recognized in peer reviews as comprehensive, conservative, and accurate. EMSI has performed the studies for over 800 colleges in the U.S. and Canada, and has most recently entered the U.K. market with some 40 contracts already signed.

EMSI is also recognized as a leader in providing integrated economic data gathered from dozens of government sources and packaged in a powerful, user-friendly web-based analysis suite, Strategic Advantage. The tool’s user base has skyrocketed to over 2,500 since 2003, mostly from the state and local public and public-private sector, but also larger agencies such as the U.S. Treasury Department and corporations such as Fortune 500 staffing giant Manpower Inc.

Some highlights of EMSI’s work in the past year include:

• Official merger with CCbenefits Inc.;
• Release of major software and data upgrades to Strategic Advantage in February and October 2007;
• Integration of CCbenefits’ Community College Strategic Planner into EMSI’s Strategic Advantage to form a single modular analysis suite;
• Overseas expansion with completion of a U.K. pilot study measuring colleges’ economic impact, followed by dozens of contracts with other U.K. colleges;
• Partnership with Maher & Maher to serve WIRED regions, with subsequent ongoing consulting project in Newton, Iowa, where a major Whirlpool closure has threatened the region’s economy;
• Partnership with Purdue University in a major rural competitiveness research project funded by the U.S. Economic Development Administration.

Even after seven years of rapid growth and new product development, EMSI remains focused on supporting and improving its current solutions and current client base.

“Last year, return business became the most important part of our revenue,” said Crapuchettes. “We have a very high renewal rate, which shows outstanding customer satisfaction. This remains a major focus area for us even as we consider entering new markets and developing new solutions.”

The Department of Labor’s Employment & Training Administration recently released a Training and Employment Notice titled “Building and Sustaining an Educated and Prepared STEM Workforce.” The notice provides a short introduction to STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) occupations, along with the federal workforce system’s role in fostering it.

With that context, here at EMSI we thought this provided a good opportunity to show how you can analyze your region’s STEM workforce with EMSI’s Strategic Advantage (SA) web-based tool, which integrates dozens of sources to make custom regional labor market research fast, flexible, and simple. With SA, you can see vital statistics on jobs, wages, trends, projections, education levels, skills, and more for any occupation or occupation group, with comparisons to larger areas like states or the whole U.S. You can also see which regional industries are likely to employ workers in these occupations and and further analyze those industries. For a more education-oriented view, the tool allows you to see which regional training providers are offering courses and producing graduates in those occupations. And finally, you can view the occupations as a “career cluster” with various career ladders, or pathways, within it having various specializations.

For quick analysis, go to SA’s Educational Analyst module, and select the “Career Clusters” tool, then the “Career Cluster Data” report. Select timeframe and other options, making sure you choose to aggregate data by cluster. Generate the report and drill down in the “Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics” cluster for regional labor market information for STEM pathways and occupations. (Click the thumbnail for full-size image.)

To get started with more analysis, you’ll need to find a list of STEM occupations using the standard codes and titles used by the federal government. A great place to do this is at the Dept. of Labor’s O*NET site. In Strategic Advantage, go to the Career Pathways module and select the Occupational Analysis > Occupational Programs tool. This will allow you to create an occupation group using O*NET-SOC codes. Find and select the occupations and save the group as “STEM”.

With this list of STEM occupations (and with the individual occupations within it), you can use SA’s Career Pathways module to:

1. View O*NET data on knowledge, skills, and abilities (Occupational Analysis > Occupational Competencies)
2. Compare two occupations’ knowledge, skill, and ability requirements (Occupational Analysis > Compare Occupations)
3. See regional educational institutions that offer related programs (Occupational Analysis > Occupational Programs)
4. See the regional “labor pool” of occupations are compatible with certain STEM occupations (Transition Workers > Into Occupation)
5. Create maps of postsecondary completions in related programs (EMSI GIS)

To just get labor market information, you’ll have to define the list using plain SOC codes in Strategic Advantage’s Economic Forecaster module. These are the same as O*NET-SOC codes except without the 2-digit decimal extension, which allows O*NET to have slightly more detailed occupational categories. With this list, you’ll be able to:

1. See which postsecondary courses of study are linked to these occupations (Educational Analyst > Find Programs)
2. View extensive regional labor market reports with jobs, wages, trends, and projections (Economic Forecaster > Occupation tool > Jobs by Occupation, Occupation Report)
3. See which regional industries employ the most workers in STEM (Economic Forecaster > Occupation tool > Inverse Staffing Patterns)
4. Create maps using occupational data (EMSI GIS).

Here’s an example of chemical engineering jobs in California:

This is just a quick introduction to some of the capabilities of Strategic Advantage. To learn more, current users are encouraged to browse the online help within the tool, or take advantage of EMSI’s free, unlimited Customer Solutions support service. Prospective users can browse our main site for more information or tour videos.

For either Sales or Customer Solutions, feel free to call EMSI at (866) 999-3674 (8am to 5pm Pacific).

Here’s a sampling of workforce, education, and economic development news from the holidays:

• Dept. of Labor / Employment and Training Administration plans to examine the net impact of WIA Title I programs (link)
• “Bio-science” gains a foothold in Ohio (link)
• Large workforce gap looms in North Carolina (link)
• Oklahoma releases Employer Survey Report (link)
• Are economic impact studies good for the arts? (A pro and con view)
• Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation releases national and state-specific economic impact studies of hunting and angling (link)
• Boston College releases Phase II of The National Study of Business Strategy and Workforce Development, focusing on the employers’ awareness and response to the challenge of an aging workforce (link)

UPDATE: See even more client snapshots here.

Current and prospective clients sometimes ask EMSI how their peers are using Strategic Advantage. To help with this knowledge-sharing, we’re pleased to publish a handful of customer experiences that demonstrate some of the real-world solutions enabled by Strategic Advantage (SA) in the fields of economic development, workforce investment, and education. We hope that current and prospective SA users find them useful and inspiring. [Disclaimer: EMSI has received permission to publish these case studies for informational purposes. They should not be interpreted as constituting an official or unofficial endorsement from the organizations listed.]

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