First, using Economic Forecaster we found areas where substantial job loss has occurred over the past year. Our search revealed that across the UK storage occupations, Personal assistants, Receptionists, Electricians, Metal workers, Woodworkers, and Packers have experienced huge cuts over the past year.

For this scenario, let’s focus more closely on Electricians (highlighted in blue). Electricians lost 6,600 jobs last year or 4% of its total workforce. This is significant and it means that there are many people with this skill set who are likely looking for new employment.

So how can we help them?

Well, using our Career Pathways tool we can search to find occupations that are “compatible” based on knowledge and skills similarities. We filtered our list to include jobs that have shown at least some form of growth and have wages that would be close to what Electricians normally make.

Our search has revealed the following occupations, all of which have a compatibility of 80 or above (based on a scale of 0-100). Building inspectors is an interesting possibility — mostly due to the fact that the earnings are so much better.

So now let’s take a closer look at what it would take to move an Electrician to a Building inspector. First, using Career Pathways we can generate a chart that shows a comparison between the “knowledge” (i.e., the sorts of things you learn via training or education) of an Electrician to the knowledge of a Building inspector.

In this example it looks like an Electrician will need to improve his knowledge of Building & Construction, Customer & Personal Service, Engineering & Technology, Public Safety & Security, and Law & Government to really be a qualified inspector.

Now let’s look at the skills side. For the skills, which represent qualities that are inherent in certain jobs, there is not such a wide disparity. Basic mathematics seems to be the only gap that needs addressing.

With this information we have a solid foundation and justification for understanding what it takes to transition from an Electrician to Building inspector. This sort of data could be used to help inform program development and can be used to talk to local employers to better understand the skills needs of Building inspectors.

Finally, with this data, colleges can go out into the local community and get more than anecdotal information from unemployed individuals and businesses to better assess their interests, hiring outlooks, skills needs, and overall opinions of these datasets.

Once this is done, the college will have a strong, data-driven understanding of how to help someone from a specific occupational sector find meaningful re-employment. In addition, this sort of approach could really benefit local employers too — because it will help training providers develop more specific programs to meet their actual needs.

For more information on how EMSI can help UK organizations with data and skills info, please contact Mike Church or call 001.208.892.5573.

For every pound invested by government in colleges, the taxpayer sees a return on investment of £1.70, according to an economic analysis commissioned for Colleges Week to measure further education’s impact.

The combined socio-economic benefits and savings achieved by colleges yields the taxpayer a better rate of return than if they had invested the cash in the stock market, according to Economic Modelling Specialists Inc. (EMSI), a US-based company.

David Collins, president of the Association of Colleges, which commissioned the EMSI study, said: “As we mark the first Colleges Week, this research shows clearly that England’s further education colleges are a sound investment from multiple perspectives.

Read the full story in the Guardian here.

While Strategic Advantage will be initially promoted for use by further education (FE) colleges to create more data-driven strategies for program alignment and marketing, the tool will be an invaluable new resource with a wide array of potential applications for economic and labour market researchers in both private and public sectors.

To learn more:

• View the FE launch brochure (PDF)
• Download an FE-focused whitepaper explaining the data included in Strategic Advantage

Screenshots from the tool (currently in a “beta” version):

Event Date and Location:

13th November 2008, 10am – 1pm
The Institute of Directors
116 Pall Mall
London
SW1Y 5ED

Schedule:
10-10:20
Coffee and Registration

10:20-10:35
Keynote Address
John Hayes MP, Shadow Minister for Vocational Education

10:35-11:00
The Socioeconomic Impact study and how it is being used
Kjell Christophersen, Co-founder and Senior Economist, EMSI

11:00 – 11:30
Being responsive to the needs of local employers and accountable to the good of the public
Ioan Morgan, Principal, Warwickshire College

11:30 – 12:45
Meeting the Needs of Employers
Discussion of how colleges use local labor market analysis to engage employers and place workers and a demonstration of EMSI’s new UK version of Strategic Advantage
Andrew Crapuchettes, CEO, EMSI

12:45 – 1:00
Q & A

1:00
Lunch

To book:

Download this invitation or contact Protocol National.

Economic Modeling Specialists Inc. (EMSI) is pleased to announce the first international launch of its Strategic Advantage economic analysis suite at The Institute of Directors in London on November 13th. The web-based software, which has some 2,000 users at more than 400 organizations in the United States, is currently being customised to display and analyse data for England’s counties and unitary authorities. The launch event will include a product demonstration and seminar (download the invitation or book now with Protocol National).

“We are very pleased to be able to bring practical, user-friendly economic and labour market research tools to the UK,” said EMSI CEO Andrew Crapuchettes. “We are doing some really ground-breaking work in making this kind of information accessible and usable for public and private sector organisations alike.”

Strategic Advantage will launch initially with two core modules.

• The “Economic Impact” module allows researchers to build customised “input-output” models of regional economies. These allow simulations of how many jobs in an area might be gained or lost due to the “ripple effects” of hypothetical changes in one or more industries. Whereas in the past such models have had to be constructed on a region-by-region basis and were available from only one or two firms, EMSI allows anyone to build a model for a custom-defined region in minutes over the Internet, and individuals can instantly use the model to run impact simulations.
• The “Economic Forecaster” includes past data and projections for an area’s industries, workforce, and population demographics.

EMSI plans to follow up in early 2009 with additional modules that would help connect labour market trends to colleges’ workforce-oriented programs as well as to occupational knowledge and skills.

The key advantages of EMSI’s tools that have made them so popular in the United States include

1. Integration of multiple government statistical databases into a single source,
2. Value-added estimation and extrapolation for gaps in published data,
3. Built-in analysis and reports that help make sense of data and are displayed instantly over the web, and
4. The ability to perform custom aggregations/groupings of geographic areas and data types.

US community and technical colleges in particular, equivalents of the UK’s further education or FE colleges, have flocked to EMSI for the information they need to anticipate and meet the demand for a more skilled and educated workforce.

“In the US, these colleges are taking on a central role in agile, demand-driven workforce development, which is critical for national competitiveness,” states Crapuchettes. “We help them carry out that mission.”

EMSI, which has already carried out socioeconomic impact studies for dozens of FE colleges,  expects them to be in the first line of customers for Strategic Advantage as well. EMSI sees the college impact study and Strategic Advantage tool are complementary: the former informs the public about a college’s role in building regional prosperity while the latter helps the college optimize that role by aligning itself with regional workforce demand. To address these issues Ioan Morgan, principal of Warwickshire College, will be a main speaker at the November 13th launch event.

EMSI anticipates that many types of organizations and companies, not just the FE sector, could benefit from the information available in Strategic Advantage. “In the US, many public and private organizations are beginning to see the advantage of getting all their economic and labour market data from a single source,” says Crapuchettes.

Further details on the UK version of Strategic Advantage (still under development):

• Initially data will be available for England only, with the entire UK expected to follow next year.
• Industry, occupation, and population data will be available for NUTS 3 areas (generally counties and unitary authorities, with some exceptions) and custom groupings of these areas.
• Industry analysis and input-output models will include detail on over 200 industries.

For more information about EMSI and Strategic Advantage, please contact Mike Church at EMSI (+1 866 999 3674, US Pacific Daylight Time). For information on the launch event and booking, please contact Lauren Gage at Protocol National (0115 911 1227).

From the Chester Chronicle:

Economists assume a 4% rate of return on government investments, but when EMSI looked at West Cheshire College, which has campuses in Chester and Ellesmere Port, the rate of return was an impressive 17%.

The outcomes of the report break down the impact West Cheshire College has on learners, businesses, taxpayers and society in general.

. . . .

Principal, Sara Mogel, said: “Further Education Colleges make a tremendous contribution to society and its economy. At West Cheshire College we recognised this, but even we have been amazed at the size of our own contribution. We won’t be resting on our laurels, but will continue to work hard to make West Cheshire a stronger economy and society.”

The college has posted a press release as well as the full results of the study.

Update 2 (4/28): Another article can be found here.

A recent socioeconomic impact (SEIM) report by Economic Modeling Specialists has shown that York College is vital to the regional economy in the counties of York and North Yorkshire, England. The study is one of the first that EMSI has conducted in the United Kingdom since the adaptation of its highly successful North American impact model that has been applied to over 500 community and technical colleges on this side of the Atlantic.

An excerpt from the article in the York Press:

It is estimated that the present -day York and North Yorkshire workforce embodies approximately 58,600 qualifications gained by past and present York College learners.

These added skills promote business productivity and increase regional income. The report adds that once current learners become active in the workforce they contribute millions to the local economy by promoting business output, raising consumer spending and increase property income in the UK.

Principal Alison Birkinshaw said: “This report confirms how important York College is to both the local and regional economy and how successful the college is in addressing the needs of local and regional businesses. Learners enjoy higher earnings after receiving education from York College, thereby expanding the economic base and reducing the burden on taxpayers.”

Please fill out the form on this page to reserve your place and receive more information.

Any FE college that signs a contract for the SEIM before 31 May 2008 will receive the lower rate, but after that date the price will increase to the standard rate of £8500.

For more information about SEIM pricing, please contact EMSI.

The company started work on data provided by the college in December last year. In May, the results were made public and were impressive, Morgan says. “My college was found to put £125m each year into the Warwickshire economy.”

This was based on the earning capacities over a working lifetime of 30 years of the colleges’ graduates who had gained qualifications there. The college was also assessed as yielding a return rate of 6% on every tax pound invested in it.

These were the key economic impacts. In addition were the savings made in healthcare and judicial costs by the colleges’ graduates because educated people tend to be fitter and commit less crime, Morgan says.

Read the full article.