A new report from the National Commission on Adult Literacy, produced in conjunction with the Charles Stewart Mott foundation, finds that the U.S. is actually less educated than it was a generation ago, and that this extremely poor adult literacy (and, presumably, numeracy) will result in a decline in economic competitiveness. The report calls for a huge expansion of adult literacy and workforce training programs to serve the tens of millions of adults who are unprepared to contribute to the American economy.

Link to press release, full report.

Representatives from EMSI, Maher & Maher, and the Newton, Iowa region will be presenting a session titled “The Integrated RIG Planning Process: Lessons From the First Regional Innovation Grant” at the U.S. Department of Labor’s Workforce Innovations 2008 conference. For those going to the conference and interested in attending the session, it is scheduled for Thursday, July 17th, at 9:30am—check your conference schedule for details.

Session summary: “Newton, Iowa and the Central Iowa region are a microcosm of the changes in the manufacturing industry. Learn how the region used workforce information intelligence and tools, along with carefully facilitated local intelligence, to form the region and lead a data-driven planning process focused on creating a different kind of economy. Understand the key aspect of ‘selling’ regionalization in an environment that is intensely political and local in its perspective.”

EMSI led the project’s economic and workforce analysis, contributing asset maps, industry focus reports, and a SWOT analysis. A summary of the session will be posted on EMSI’s web site after the conference.

Approaches to worker recruitment in the 21st century are changing, but with the right information, an effective strategy, and expert execution, the opportunities for success are abundant. This is even true in the energy sector, which is expected to experience a wave of retirements and pressing worker shortages in coming years. By using detailed national and local data, one talent management consulting firm increased its client’s pool of qualified applicants by 400% in two weeks.

Read the full case study to find out how Brian Kelsey of Civic Analytics delivered a data-driven solution to a national talent management firm.

Strategic Advantage locates talent for the energy industry (PDF)

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 and hospitality, non-nursing health care, retail, and maritime industry sectors. In particular, the report helped inform the college’s newly-launched Project Welcome, an initiative designed to train students for careers in New York’s fast-growing tourism and hospitality industries. In a recent local news article, representatives from the college and Workforce Strategy Center lauded the project’s success.

Indeed, a year after the launch of the program, Project Welcome, Kingsborough Community College (KCC) is reporting success above and beyond what was initially predicted, opening the door to potential success for those just beginning their work careers as well as those making mid-life career changes.

Stuart Schulman, the director of KCC’s Center for Economic and Workforce Development, said that Project Welcome – which had been established thanks to a $1.7 million grant from the United States Department of Labor – had exceeded the federal requirements as far as the number of people trained is concerned. In addition, Schulman said that the program — which centers on a 280-hour, 10 week course — had also exceeded its goals in terms of placement.

The framework used by Workforce Strategy Center, known as “Career Pathways,” is designed to help workers get training for jobs in high-demand fields with clear opportunities for future career advancement. It has been successfully paired with EMSI’s wealth of regional labor market data in several workforce development projects around the country.

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)

The Nashville Chamber of Commerce recently released an extensive study of the area’s labor market written by the Center for Regional Economic Competitiveness (download report materials here; read the press release here). The report covers population, industry, and occupation trends and forecasts for the greater Nashville area, in addition to a labor market supply/demand analysis that compares area college graduates to high-demand occupations.

The report, titled “Labor Market Opportunities in the Nashville Economic Market Area: An Assessment of the Region’s Labor Force Demand and Supply,” states that of the approximately 1.25 million working-age people in the Nashville region, about 853,000 people are participating in the labor force and 34,000 are seeking work (4 percent unemployment rate). The report concludes that the region could face a shortage of about 2,300 or more workers per year during the next decade as job creation outpaces the number of people available to work.

“We are looking at workforce supply and demand from a long-term, regional perspective,” said Tennessee Labor and Workforce Development Commissioner James Neeley. “To effectively support our regional economic development priorities, it is imperative that we align our education and training resources with our workforce development needs.”

The authors of the study chose to use EMSI’s Strategic Advantage web-based regional analysis tool (paired with EMSI’s Complete Employment dataset) because of its ease of use, geographic flexibility, inclusion of all types of jobs (not just those covered by unemployment insurance), and estimation of data points “suppressed” by publicly available sources.

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).

EMSI will be exhibiting at the 6th annual National Workforce Association conference, December 1-4 in St. Petersburg, Florida. Whether you’re a current or prospective customer, feel free to stop by EMSI’s booth to find out how we’re designing cutting-edge products and services to support workforce investment planning.

EMSI will also be presenting in two sessions at the Association for Career and Technical Education (ACTE) Convention and Career Tech Expo, December 13-15 in Las Vegas. The session titles and descriptions are:

1. “Career and Technical Education: Driving Regional Economic Development” (Thursday, 2:15 pm): Success in the emerging economy is the presence of talent in the workforce, and career/technical education can be even stronger drivers of economic development. This session demonstrates how CTE can drive regional competitiveness within a career pathways model and by utilizing robust automated tools to analyze labor market information.
2. “A Demand-Driven Approach to Planning and Implementing a Regional Career Cluster Initiative” (Friday, 9:15 am): The career cluster framework has been shown to motivate and engage students by linking the classroom to the workplace. As educators consider the implementation of clusters, several key questions should guide their discussion. What are the high-wage, high-growth career clusters in the region? What pathways and occupations should be targeted so that student’s interests align with the needs of the economy? This session covers the data required to plan and implement a demand-driven career cluster initiative.

Recently, CLM Workforce Connection, Ocala Economic Development Council and Central Florida Community College—all located in Ocala, Florida—teamed up to initiate a shared, focused industry strategy for their region. In order to target the right industries and high growth, high wage occupations, they used integrated regional data and local knowledge to focus their resources on important local industries, and formed a direct line of communication with key local employers in those industries. As a direct result, they have now launched their targeted industry committees and have begun to attract and focus grant funding in critical workforce areas.

Read the full case study: Data-Driven Collaboration in Ocala

UPDATE: See the case study on the Department of Labor’s Workforce3One (free reg. req.).

This chapter is an excellent introduction to the background, definition, and goals of “workforce development.” It is one chapter in a forthcoming book on technical/vocational education and training. Posted here by permission of the lead author.

Citation:

Jacobs, R., & Hawley, J. (2008). Emergence of Workforce Development: Definition, Conceptual Boundaries, and Implications. In R. MacLean & D. Wilson (eds.), International Handbook of Technical and Vocational Education and Training, Amsterdam: Kluwer.

Abstract:

Scholars and practitioners from a wide range of backgrounds have begun to use the term workforce development. This increasing usage requires sustained effort to create the theoretical background for the new term. The article reviews the reasons that the term has become more important, focusing on five converging concepts: 1) globalization, 2) technology, 3) the new economy, 4) political change, and 5) demographic shifts. This background serves as foundation for a new definition of workforce development that rests on a simultaneous consideration of individual, organization, and societal levels. Finally, the chapter discusses the implications of workforce development on the thinking of policy makers, researchers, and practitioners alike.

Download the PDF Version: Emergence of Workforce Development