The city of Temple, Texas, is strategically located along the Interstate 35 corridor between Austin and the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex. In addition, it is adjacent to Fort Hood, one of the largest active duty armored posts in the US. In 2011 the Killeen-Temple-Fort Hood MSA was ranked among top five best-performing metro areas in the nation, according to the Milken Institute, which ranks metropolitan areas by how well they are creating and sustaining jobs and economic growth.

The Temple EDC wished to position the city to continue this trend through a better targeted business recruitment program. With this in mind, TIP was hired to define the top five industry categories best suited for Temple, taking into account the community’s and region’s existing assets. Additionally TIP was to provide extensive research on each target, as well as a marketing and implementation plan.

The selection of target sectors is traditionally bound to an assessment of only a few determinant factors, such as access to an available workforce, industrial sites, and incentives. Our target industry recommendations are not based solely on these issues, but also on conversations with the area’s business leaders to better understand potential opportunities and challenges that might not be readily identifiable through secondary data sources alone.

Laborshed Analysis: Employees by Zip Code
Source: TIP Strategies

To define the study area for the target industry analysis, we established the actual laborshed of the City of Temple by collecting employee zip code information from the city’s major employers. We obtained data from 11 employers on 17,958 employees or 10% of the Temple Metropolitan Statistical Area’s (MSA) non-military workforce. Employers represented various sectors including healthcare, distribution, back office, education, and manufacturing.

Using tools such as a laborshed analysis, economic base analysis, location quotients, and a shift-share analysis, a quantitative analysis was conducted to identify potential target industry sectors. The list was then filtered further using specific criteria, including location, growth, size, image, and infrastructure. The resulting list includes both existing industry clusters and aspirational targets. Each industry sector was profiled and specific niches are noted. These niches show the greatest potential for growth, pay higher than average earnings, and are sufficiently large to warrant an investment of TEDC’s resources for business recruitment. In addition, they play to Temple’s strengths and fit with Temple’s site availability.

The TEDC adopted the plan in early 2012. With the tools provided by TIP, the TEDC has augmented its marketing program, enhanced its industry research, and re-focused its business recruitment efforts.

By: Aaron Corvin
Via: The Columbian

Washington State University Vancouver career counselor Christine Lundeen works with student Annise Nassib on Wednesday at the Student Services Center.

A slow economic recovery is under way in the U.S., as employers enlarge their payrolls and the unemployment rate inches down.

For young job seekers, however, the numbers tell a different story.

While the federal unemployment rate is 8.2 percent, unemployment for 20- to 24-year-olds is 13.2 percent. In Washington state, the unemployment rate is 8.2 percent. By contrast, the jobless rate for 16- to 24-year-olds was 21 percent in 2011. That’s up from 11.8 percent in 2007.

While there are no equivalent unemployment data for counties, it’s likely that Clark County’s job market mirrors the statewide figures, according to Scott Bailey, regional economist for the Washington State Employment Security Department.

What is known about Clark County is that the number of jobs held by high school-age workers plummeted by 40 percent from the first quarter of 2009 to the first quarter of 2011, Bailey said. For those ages 19 to 21, the number of jobs in Clark County dipped by 11 percent in the same period.

The situation for young job seekers in Oregon is similar. The unemployment rate was 19 percent for 16- to 24-year-olds in 2011. That’s more than double the overall jobless rate, and it’s up from about 11 percent in 2007.

The numbers underscore the tough spot that an entire generation of young workers find themselves in: They face an economy marked by lower pay and fewer job prospects, experts say, and rising pressure to attend college to have a shot in an economy that increasingly favors the highly skilled.

More seekers than jobs

The long-term weak economy has favored employers with a wealth of qualified candidates, and has caused the most pain for the newest entrants to the workforce.

Employers usually lower wages when there’s an oversupply of job applicants. What’s more, they’re able to be choosy, hiring the most experienced job candidates while eschewing younger ones, according to Dave Wallace, senior economist for the state Employment Security Department.

“That’s where (younger workers) really lose out,” Wallace said.

And older workers are staying in their jobs longer and putting off retirement, according to Guy Tauer, a regional economist for the Oregon Employment Department.

College grads in demand

Before the recession, younger workers filled a lot of Clark County’s production and construction jobs, Bailey said. Those low-skilled, entry-level positions were the first to be vaporized by the nation’s economic spiral.

In fact, some experts say a fundamental shift in the economy is well under way, where the U.S. labor market is increasingly open to only those who possess a college education.

In 2011, Jon Roberts, principal of Austin, Texas-based TIP Strategies, who oversaw development of a new economic development plan for Clark County, publicly urged regional leaders to boost Washington State University Vancouver’s role in creating economic growth.

He cited data showing that the jobless burden in the U.S. is shared unevenly. People who lack a high school diploma are experiencing a jobless rate of 13.7 percent, while 7.4 percent of those with college degrees are unemployed.

“Any region that isn’t committed to higher education and higher education training is likely to suffer significantly high unemployment,” Roberts told a gathering of more than 300 people at The Heathman Lodge in Vancouver.

David Autor, professor of economics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told Bloomberg.com that the U.S. workplace is polarizing between the education haves and have-nots.

And more jobs — even if they’re blue-collar jobs such as auto repair — will require some kind of college or post-secondary training, Anthony Carnevale, director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, told the Philadelphia Inquirer. “The only thing more expensive than going to college is not going. Kids are damned if they do, damned if they don’t.”

Employers say they will hire 10.2 percent more new college graduates in 2011-12 than they did in 2010-11, according to a survey released in March by the National Association of Colleges and Employers.

That’s a slight increase over employers’ initial projection — 9.5 percent — “and marks the second consecutive year in which employers have adjusted their hiring expectations upward,” the survey said.

That’s “encouraging data” for new or soon-to-be college graduates, including those at WSUV, said Christine Lundeen, the branch campus’ career counselor.

Lundeen said she began her job about 3 years ago, when the economy was in a tailspin. Since then, she said she has noticed an increase in the number of employers showing interest in WSUV students.

“It’s definitely been encouraging,” she said. “Every year, I have more and more employers contacting me to post jobs and internships.”

No guarantees

However, as the national survey shows, a college degree hardly guarantees landing a job. Competition is high: About 32 new college graduates are expected to apply for every job posting during the 2011-12 recruiting year, according to the survey. That’s up from 21.1 applicants for every job posting during the 2010-11 recruiting year.

And that’s all the more reason for college students to get aggressive about reaching potential employers rather than just passively searching online, Lundeen said.

In fact, she said, campus leaders are encouraging students to get some experience, via internships and other programs, in the fields they’re pursuing while they’re still in college.

College departments are teaming with community organizations and business leaders to bring real world issues into classrooms, Lundeen said.

Students are taking the initiative, too, she said. One WSUV student group focused on accounting, business and finance recently secured a visit to campus by two potential employers: the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Bonneville Power Administration.

In an economy that still has weak spots, Lundeen said she’s noticed students becoming increasingly aware that a college degree, while an important key to unlocking the labor market, isn’t necessarily a sure lock on a job.

“There’s definitely been an increase in the use of services,” she said of the career and networking advice her office provides. “The word’s getting out; it’s a tough market, and you need to be developing the best résumé, thinking about job-searching strategies and networking.”

Lundeen added, “The campus as a whole is really pushing to get students experienced in their field before they leave.”

By:Nathan Yau
Via: FlowingData

An update to an interactive by Hannah Fairfield and Graham Roberts of The New York Times in 2010, making use of Mike Bostock’s Wealth & Health of Nations D3 port.

On average, women are still paid less than men for working comparable jobs. Is it getting better? Below shows how salaries between the genders have changed over the past nine years.


*Only occupations with data for all years and with at least 50,000 respondents for each sex are shown.
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

By: Brent Rasmussen
Via: Harvard Business Review

We often hear from job seekers: “If I have the necessary skills and experience, why am I not hearing back from more companies?”

It’s a fair question, especially for the more than five million workers who’ve been unemployed for six months or longer (more than 40 percent of all unemployed job seekers). Struggling to get a foot in the door doesn’t mean this group is unqualified or lacks what it takes to do the job. With hundreds of applications submitted for a single open position, it’s indicative of a fiercely competitive labor market.

So how does someone who’s among the long-term unemployed stand out? Will employers even look past their employment gap — the time that’s elapsed since their last day on the job?

New research from CareerBuilder found that 85 percent of hiring managers and human resource managers are more understanding of employment gaps now than they were pre-recession. While that’s refreshing news, it comes with an important caveat: This group still needs to go another step to draw attention to their resumes.

Companies are still looking carefully at how unemployed job seekers have spent their time. There’s a notion is that if you’ve been out of work for an extended period of time, you begin to lose an edge on previously acquired skills. Whether or not you buy into the concept of skills erosion, it’s safe to assume that hiring managers are more likely to look past employment gaps for applicants who’ve stayed active in the interim.

So what do hiring managers recommend?

In the same survey, 61 percent said taking a class or going back to school is a great start. This can be as simple as taking a certification course (e.g., IT workers), attending professional seminars, or enrolling in community college courses. If the subject matter expands your skill set or can be applied in the next job, that’s information that should be featured prominently on your resume or in your cover letter.

Sixty percent of hiring managers said volunteering increases the candidate’s marketability. Volunteerism is a testament to a person’s character and work ethic. However, many job seekers are not doing the best job of promoting that experience on their resumes and cover letters. It can’t be an isolated bullet point buried on the page. Job seekers should choose volunteer work that can be woven organically into their existing professional narratives — and then be ready to sell it no differently than the rest of their work history. Ask yourself: What skills did I learn or hone? Can I quantify my impact or speak to how my efforts contributed to the organizations’ successes?

Seventy-nine percent said taking a temporary or contract assignment is advisable. Temp or contract work is not just for entry-level workers and young professionals. Opportunities are available across job types, experience levels, and salary ranges. If becoming a permanent freelancer isn’t in your plans, note that about one in four employers plan to transition some temporary workers into full-time, permanent employees in quarter two of 2012.

Fewer employers felt that the ambitious task of starting your own business (28 percent) or writing a professional blog (11 percent) were good ways to improve your marketability, but if those activities showcase your potential value, they certainly can’t hurt.

Say a job seeker has done all this and still isn’t faring any better? There are two job search tactics that are vastly underutilized, according to our research and conversations with employers: follow-through and presenting customized ideas to your prospective employer.

Two-thirds of workers don’t follow up with the employer after submitting their resume for consideration. If the hiring manager provides contact information, sending an email a week or two after submission can prompt a closer look (or maybe even a second look) at your resume. And when the interview opportunity arrives, it’s best not to focus solely on the past. Employers want candidates who have researched their company rigorously, and have prepared concrete ideas for what they’ll bring to the role.

A competitive labor market requires a dynamic job search. Regardless of how unemployed job seekers spend their time, the common denominator is to continue your professional development and show potential employers how you can help them.

By: Eric Westervelt
Via: NPR

Waltraud Grubitzsch/DPA/Landov

Metal-working apprentices train in Leipzig, Germany, in 2010. Germany has Europe’s lowest youth unemployment rate, thanks in part to its ancient apprentice system, which trains about 1.5 million people each year.

For as long as he can remember, German teenager Robin Dittmar has been obsessed with airplanes. As a little boy, the sound of a plane overhead would send him into the backyard to peer into the sky. Toys had to have wings. Even today, Dittmar sees his car as a kind of ersatz Boeing.

“I’ve got the number 747 as the number plate of my car. I’m really in love with this airplane,” the 18-year-old says.

Less-than-perfect school grades dashed Dittmar’s dream of becoming a commercial pilot. But they were good enough to earn him a coveted apprenticeship slot with Lufthansa Technik, the technical arm of Europe’s largest airline, responsible for aircraft maintenance and repair across the globe.

One-third of the way through his three-and-a-half years of training at Lufthansa technical headquarters in Hamburg, Dittmar is honing the skills required to become an aircraft mechanic — and all-but-guaranteeing himself a job.

The protracted European debt crisis and austerity measures have made career prospects for many of the continent’s youth bleaker than ever. In Spain and Greece, nearly half of all those under age 25 are unemployed.

But as Dittmar’s experience illustrates, that’s not the case in Germany. In stark contrast, Germany’s youth employment is the highest in Europe, with only a 7.8 percent jobless rate. At the heart of that success is a learn-on-the-job apprenticeship system that has its roots in the Middle Ages but is thriving today in Germany’s modern, export-oriented economy.

On-The-Job Training

A brightly lit Lufthansa workshop in Hamburg is part of that apprenticeship system. Teenagers like Dittmar, many dressed in the company’s navy blue shirts and overalls, are busy learning the basics: drilling, filing, soldering and manipulating sheet metal.

Dittmar’s apprenticeship is part of Germany’s well-established and successful “dual system,” so-called because training is done both in-house at a company and partly at local vocational colleges.

About two-thirds of his time is spent on the job at Lufthansa — split between workshops and classrooms, and actually working on real aircraft and engines supervised by an experienced full-time mechanic, a “training buddy.”

“[The training buddies] are taking the apprentice with them in their work. They are integrating them in their work and they are making real training on the job,” says Hans-Peter Meinhold, Lufthansa’s head of vocational training. “So it’s a one-to-one situation.”

For an aviation buff like Dittmar, getting to work on real machines so soon is not only a sign that his employers see potential in him, but also fuels his passion for planes.

“I could work anyplace in the world. I like the system here,” the teenager says. “I know that I will be a good aircraft mechanic when I’m out of the apprenticeship, so that’s very cool to know.”

Eric Westervelt/NPR

Apprentices are trained at the Lufthansa Technik training center in Hamburg last month. About 60 percent of German high school students opt for vocational training over further academic education

Long-Term Benefits

About 60 percent of German high school graduates travel the same path as Dittmar, choosing vocational over academic education. Throughout his training, Lufthansa pays Dittmar the equivalent of $1,000 a month, one-third of the starting wage a qualified mechanic would get. That’s part of the system that some foreign visitors can’t comprehend, director Meinhold says.

“I tell them [the apprentices] don’t pay anything for it, they get paid by the companies. They get money for their training,” Meinhold says. “‘You are training them and you are paying them for that?’ They can’t understand this.”

Once qualified, these skilled aeronautical and engine mechanics feed into a fairly robust European aviation industry, either directly at Lufthansa or at one of its subsidiaries or competitors.

For many, the potential of being hired permanently is the key attraction. Germany’s industry still offers a majority of skilled workers the elusive “job for life,” a long-gone legend in many other Western countries.

Meinhold believes that despite the costs, the apprentice system is an investment vital to the ongoing success of Germany’s export-dependent economy by creating loyal, well-trained employees.

“It’s a quite expensive way we go,” he says. “The benefit we get from the system later, that’s a great benefit and makes everything economical.”

A Model For The Rest Of Europe?

Germany’s dual system trains 1.5 million people annually. Across the board, from bakers and car mechanics to carpenters and violin-makers, about 90 percent of apprentices successfully complete their training, German government figures show. The apprenticeships vary in length, between two and three-and-a-half years. The average training “allowance” is 680 euros a month (approximately $900), and about half of the apprentices stay on in the company that trained them.

British Prime Minister David Cameron recently called for his country to emulate parts of the German system by reinvigorating British apprenticeships with higher-level training.

“I think what we are going to see with the expansion of the higher level apprenticeships is many people going into them as they leave school, spending time doing that and then going on and doing a university degree linked to their apprenticeship skill,” Cameron said. “That is what has happened for years in Germany and it is going to be happening much more in Britain.”

But Rolf von Luede, an economic sociologist at the University of Hamburg, isn’t so sure the German system would translate well to other parts of Europe. He notes that German industry and its powerful trade unions have a unique relationship marked by what he calls “antagonistic cooperation,” a far cry, he says, from the more confrontational policies pursued by unions in Spain and Britain.

“One of the crucial aspects of the German dual system is that it is created by a cooperation of the employers and the trade unions,” von Luede says. “[It is] really a model that ensures that the qualifications that are needed within the industry are supported by this apprenticeship.”

Eric Westervelt/NPR

Apprentices are trained at the Lufthansa Technik training center in Hamburg last month. About 60 percent of German high school students opt for vocational training over further academic education

Not Enough Skilled Workers

Today Germany has a problem that Britain, Spain and other European countries can only dream of: It doesn’t have enough skilled workers to meet the demands of its economy. Almost one-third of German companies could not fill open jobs in 2011. And some 30,000 apprenticeship placements went unfilled — or about 2 percent.

According to von Luede, this deficit is the result of a dramatic demographic shift. Birth rates are falling across Europe, but the effect is pronounced in what was once East Germany: There are half as many high school graduates in the East as there were only five years ago. Von Luede believes the solution is for Germany to relax its immigration policies because Germany’s population is shrinking.

“Migration has to be orientated at people who are qualified or who may be qualified in the future by the educational system of Germany,” he says.

But while 30,000 apprenticeships went unfilled, 85,000 high school graduates failed to find a placement. The reason for this mismatch, a recent study by the German Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training found, is that the education system is failing to adequately prepare the children of recent immigrants for the job market.

Analyst von Leude agrees, adding that many school districts still divide children into blue- or white-collar career tracks while in elementary school.

To address the mismatch between jobs and the labor market, the German government just made it a little easier for skilled foreign workers outside the EU to come to Germany by lowering the income requirement — to about $60,000 from $88,000.

Under the rules change, non-EU workers who meet the new requirement will be able to stay in Germany permanently after a three-year period, if they are still employed. People with particularly good German language skills will be allowed to stay after a two-year period.

By: Jack Mollen
Via: HBR Blog Network

It is time for immigration reform that will keep more top technical talent in the United States. Today, American colleges and universities are educating foreign nationals who come here to earn advanced degrees in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM fields). We educate them, and then U.S. immigration regulations force them to leave our country to return home, where they contribute to economic growth and the success of our competitors overseas. That has to change.

When allowed to remain in the U.S., foreign nationals with STEM degrees earned at American schools have gone on to become some of our most distinguished engineers and researchers. They add value to our economy and our companies. They generate new insights and contribute to innovations that change the way the industry addresses previously unsolved problems. Yet, U.S. employers face greater demand for STEM skills than the supply of STEM graduates. And the lack of immigration reform is constricting the pipeline of technical talent.

The 2009 study, Losing the World’s Best and Brightest (funded by the Kauffman Foundation, in collaboration with Harvard Law School, Duke University’s School of Engineering and U.C. School of Information and Harvard Law School), found that “foreign national students… are planning to leave the U.S. after graduation in numbers that appear to be higher than the historical norm as measured in STEM disciplines. A significant number of these students also say they intend to open businesses in the future.”

According to the study, foreign national students claim their reason for leaving the U.S. after graduation is because they “are very worried about obtaining the work visa required to pursue employment in the U.S. (a major concern for over 70% of respondents) and about the difficulties of obtaining permanent residency (a major concern for over 50% of respondents from China and Europe).” After coming to the U.S. to learn, they don’t want to have to wait a decade or longer just to receive Permanent Resident status and the security of knowing that they can continue to pursue their career in the U.S., employed by American firms, where they would contribute to U.S. economic growth.

In addition to the trouble of retaining STEM graduates in the U.S., EMC and other leading employers in the U.S. face enormous obstacles when we try to relocate top technical talent from abroad into the United States. For example, take the L-1B visa, which allows employers to bring tenured employees to the U.S. to perform work utilizing their specialized knowledge of proprietary products and processes of the sponsoring employer. This kind of employer-based nonimmigrant petitions were granted routinely in the past. They are now being audited or denied, even though the regulations governing submissions have not changed. According to the National Foundation for American Policy, denial rates for L-1B petitions filed with the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services rose from 7% in fiscal year 2007 to 27% in fiscal year 2011.

Immigration reform that brings more technical talent to the U.S. will make the American economy and U.S. companies more competitive on the global stage. More competitive U.S. employers, in turn, will be the ones that create more jobs for others to fill.

Here are three steps the U.S. should take without delay:

  •Offer expedited green card processing for foreign nationals who earn Masters degrees or higher
   in STEM fields from U.S.-based schools and who then accept positions with U.S.-based employers.

  •Provide an efficient avenue to bring in key foreign talent from overseas subsidiaries to increase U.S.
  economic competiveness [sic].

  •Create a Trusted Employer Program for U.S. employers that maintain top internal compliance
   departments to ensure all immigration regulations are followed.

It is time to build up the U.S. economy by retaining top talent in the U.S., regardless of where that talent was born.