One of the most successful Industry Partnership programs in the United States is found in Lancaster County, Pa., where each year 3,000 to 4,000 workers are retrained to address skill gaps and help local companies remain competitive and productive.
The Lancaster County Workforce Investment Board‘s program has been so effective that it has been the recipient [...]

In this EMSI video, Josh Wright and Josh Stevenson walk through the new updates to two of our web-based tools — Career Pathways, which is dedicated to skills and career exploration, and Educational Analyst, which helps planners assess training programs. These changes include a smoother, more user-friendly interface for analyzing re-employment scenarios, looking at occupation [...]

Illustration by Mark Beauchamp
By Scott Sheely, Executive Director
Lancaster County Workforce Investment Board
Background
For many years employment in US manufacturing has been in sharp decline. Domestic manufacturers have scaled back, outsourced, or just plain closed down. As a result, US manufacturing has become the “less desirable” industry sector for many workforce boards, economic developers, training providers, and [...]

In southeastern Wisconsin, the methods and strategies that have been used in workforce development for years are changing. By emphasizing skills-based training rather than educational attainment, a cross-section of groups is seeking to put businesses, educators, and jobseekers on the same page.
Click here for the case study in PDF format
RWA Looks at Demand-Side Competency Needs
Over [...]

Editor’s note: This is an op-ed piece by Rob Sentz, EMSI’s marketing director and author of a series of five green jobs papers.
Click here for a PDF version of this piece.

Illustration by Mark Beauchamp
Introduction

Over the past year, EMSI has been fielding questions from local planners (workforce boards, community colleges, and economic developers) on how to [...]

Client Snapshot: Governor’s Office of Workforce Development, Atlanta, GA
Cultivating a robust regional workforce for Georgia’s fastest-growing industries is the crux of the Work Ready Regions program developed by the Governor’s Office of Workforce Development. The initiative identifies the needs of businesses in regions of all sizes throughout Georgia and seeks to match those employers with [...]

Thrive, the north central Ohio component of the Ohio Skills Bank, recently debuted a new web site that offers a variety of career resources for students, dislocated/incumbent workers, and others interested in a regional look at jobs, industries, and specific programs.
The site provides a portal for regional career pathways in health care and a soon-to-be-available [...]

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 [...]

Heavy losses in manufacturing have placed immense pressure on career centers throughout north central Ohio. For Troy Shutler, a career counselor at North Central State College, a key resource for providing guidance to dislocated workers is EMSI’s Job Finder. 
The new self-service tool combines regional labor market data and current job postings with occupational compatibility analysis [...]

With manufacturing sites shutting down and the unemployment rate approaching 14%, the need for career and job-placement services has become vital in the Pendleton, SC, area. To help meet this demand and refine its own program evaluation process, Tri-County Technical College (TCTC) is using Job Finder, a new career exploration tool from EMSI that [...]