The Department of Labor’s Employment and Training Administration has released a 90+ page document detailing the various public and private workforce information sources available to researchers. Subtitled “Decision Making Assistance for Regional Economic Development,” the catalogue provides brief introductions to dozens of sources, along with comparison tables to help users identify the right source for [...]

WorkingVentures Publications: This arm of Public/Private Ventures publishes books and other resources to strengthen the field of workforce development.

This document explains the regional analysis technique of “shift share,” particularly in the context of EMSI’s tools, which provide built-in shift share analysis for any industry or occupation in any customized region.
Shift share is a standard regional analysis method that attempts to determine how much of regional job growth can be attributed to national trends [...]

This document explains the concept of Location Quotient, particularly in the context of EMSI’s tools.
Location quotient (LQ) is basically a way of quantifying how concentrated a particular industry, cluster, occupation, or demographic group is in a region as compared to the nation. It can reveal what makes a particular region “unique” in comparison to the [...]

Pennsylvania is doing great things with a demand-driven workforce system that connects economic development and industry-led initiatives with workforce training programs. Part of their planning strategy is to allocate more funding to occupations they have identified as “high-priority” using a sophisticated data-driven methodology.
Workforce3One has posted an overview of the state’s methodology (free registration required).
The basic [...]

Today’s innovative companies are just as concerned with local workforce availability as they are with building sites and incentive packages, which is why development professionals need to be prepared to answer detailed questions about their region’s labor force: size, unemployment, industry/occupation profile, workers in similar/transferable occupations, post-secondary program capacity, and so on.
Chris Manheim, President of [...]

EMSI has put together a short video walkthrough of the new features in Strategic Advantage, including instant region switching, economic indicators, smart tables, and much more.
Click here to view the video in Flash format.

Purdue University’s Center for Regional Development (CRD) and the Indiana Business Research Center, in partnership with Economic Modeling Specialists Inc., have been awarded a $350,000 grant from the Economic Development Administration to study and improve rural economic development strategies.
Results of this study will help business and government leaders throughout the nation measure innovation capacity, analyze [...]

The Oklahoma Department of Career and Technical Education helps both adults and youth get the right skills for tomorrow’s jobs. As part of this effort, the agency has embraced the States’ Career Clusters model in order to

Give students relevant, valuable, transferable skills for high-demand, high-wage jobs
Encourage students to follow career pathways that lead them from [...]

Starting November 1, EMSI’s Strategic Advantage will provide users with instant access to industry cluster definitions created by Christine Nolan and Purdue University’s Center for Regional Development. The definitions are lists of standard NAICS codes, which categorize hundreds of types of business activity. Purdue’s CRD is nationally recognized for its work on regional clusters, including [...]