Economic Development Recovery and Resiliency Playbook - Flipbook - Page 57
and ethnic chambers of commerce. By including a diverse
representation of businesses within their respective industries,
the sector partnerships emerge as an efective model for
innovation in addressing equity and inclusivity. Sector
partnerships can play a significant role in narrowing disparities
in education, skills acquisition, employment, and income.
While your industry sector partnership will define its own
agenda, almost all such partnerships focus on workforce
development issues. By joining with these business and
public partners, you can cooperatively address the issues and
challenges facing your industry sectors’ workforce.
Critical Positions
The Industry Sector Partnership Model advocates gathering
data and information from business leaders. As part of this
information gathering efort, seek data regarding critical and
Technical schools and job training centers may already
key positions within your local industries, as determined by
participate in partnerships that you can leverage.
industry leaders. “Critical positions” is an industry term used
to describe jobs in businesses or industries that are integral to
their operation. In addition to critical positions, the methods described in this section may be used to identify issues
afecting other aspects of your community’s workforce, such as entry-level positions in construction, skill development, or
certification attainment.
This information can be collected via a short survey administered to industry leaders. While occupational data is available
through subscription services like EMSI,69 the data available through such third-party data repositories is ofen limited in its level
of detail. Conducting a critical positions survey allows you to acquire directly from local employers detailed data that focuses on
the workforce needs of your community. A well-constructed survey can capture data, including employment and skill gaps, that
is not available elsewhere (see “Tips for Constructing a Critical Positions Survey” on page 50). Occupational data from third-party
providers can prove useful in vetting survey responses.
When the survey is completed, the critical positions identified by the respondents should be categorized into five to 10
occupations. The final occupations should correspond to a specific Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) code, which will
make it easier to match the occupations with additional employment data such as primary job titles, skills descriptions, base
technical competencies, projected growth, current openings, median wage, and suggested training approach for critical, highgrowth, high-need local jobs. The combined survey and occupational data can be used for future eforts, such as developing an
educational inventory, which is discussed next. This information can then be used to inform educational and other leadership as
programs and curricula are developed to meet workforce needs.
Educational Inventory
The data collected from the critical positions surveys and interviews will assist in developing an educational inventory — or an
educational inventory may have already been produced by a local university, community college, K–12 consortium, industry
partnership, workforce development board, or nonprofit organization that may be willing to share their findings with you.
Producing an educational inventory involves identifying and cataloguing the existing education and training assets that apply to
your targeted industry in your region. An educational inventory is a list of all possible educational programs within a region that
correspond to the critical positions identified in the industry survey discussed in the previous Critical Positions subsection. By
gathering this information, you will be able to identify training gaps in your region, identify the institutions that produce the most
skilled workers, and identify where to focus your recruitment eforts.
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Labor Supply, Workforce Availability, and Training
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