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Category: Events
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Do You Have the Power?
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Join the National BR|E Benchmarking Challenge 2022!
Join the National BR|E Benchmarking Challenge 2022!
We heard you… Summer is not the time for the BR|E Benchmarking. Many of you focus on a spring visit schedule. Therefore, the 2022 National BR|E Benchmarking Challenge will be held March 1 – May 15, covering 60 business days.
Registration Deadline: March 1, 2022
The goal of the Benchmarking Challenge is to set national and hopefully regional benchmarks for critical issues we discuss in business retention. Issues like workforce, employment recovery, business growth, plans to expand, growth barriers, and community issues.
These benchmarks are vital to our understanding of local issues. They provide context. CREC in association with C2ER, Business Retention and Expansion International (BREI), and the Synchronist User Community are continuing the national benchmarking project; with YOUR help. Our goal is to interview 2,000 primary (or ‘traded’) sector business executives to gauge the health of our most important community assets, primary sector businesses and the challenges they face.
By participating in this unique – time-limited national BR|E project you will gain access to the full benchmarking report.
JOIN THE CHALLENGE
2000 Primary Sector Executive Interviews
Include your community in this vitally important research!
Be one of 100 geographically dispersed organizations conducting 20 interviews each, generating the executive responses needed to set solid BR|E benchmarks for the critical existing business and community support issues.
20 Interviews x 100 Organizations
By participating in this unique – time-limited national BR|E project you will gain access to the full benchmarking report. There is no cost to participate. Primary sector executive interviews are conducted using the Synchronist Suite interview tool between March 1st and May 15th. They can be done in person, via Zoom, or by telephone.
PARTICIPANT BENEFITS
- Inform/educate leadership with local results framed in a national context (priceless!)
- Get full access to the National Benchmark Report with analysis and historic benchmarks to provide context for your local interview results
- Obtain free access to Synchronist for this project to input your data and download the data for your internal customer relationship management system
- Enhance your public brand with sample pre and posts-survey press release for local use
Demonstrate your BR|E Prowess: Awards and Recognition*
BEST INDIVIDUAL EFFORT – 1st $250 Visa Gift Card and 2nd $150 Visa Gift Cards
BEST TEAM EFFORT – 1st $400 Visa Gift Card and 2nd $200 Visa Gift Cards
BEST STATE and BEST REGIONAL Effort – 1st and 2nd place winners
BEST SPONSOR AWARD – 1st and 2nd place winners
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Announcing the 62nd C2ER Annual Conference/LMI Institute Forum
In-Person & Online
For the first time this decade, we invite you to join us in person at the 62nd Annual Conference & Forum in Columbus, OH – June 13 – 16, 2022.
We are excited to announce that for the first time EVER, we will have conference programming available for both virtual and in-person attendees.
This year’s theme is The Road Ahead: Using Data to Pave the Way. Research professionals from around the country will gather to explore the latest applications and innovations in economic and workforce development research and partnerships. As a profession, we are leading the way into the coming years.
Take a look at the agenda and get registered today! We will have more event announcements and information in the weeks ahead. So stay tuned and we look forward to seeing you at what truly is THE professional development event of the year for economic and workforce development researchers!
FOLLOW US TO COLUMBUS!
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New LED Webinar: Initial Impact of COVID-19 on Travel, Tourism, and More
LED Webinar Series:
Initial Impact of COVID-19 on Travel, Tourism, Outdoor Recreation Varied Widely Across States and Demographic Groups
February 16, 2022
1:30 PM – 2:30 PM ET
Please note there is no registration for this webinar.
The add to calendar feature will remind you when it’s about to begin.
You can join the webinar up to 20 minutes early.
The U.S. Census Bureau and the Local Employment Dynamics (LED) Partnership in collaboration with the Council for Community and Economic Research (C2ER) and the Labor Market Information (LMI) Institute, welcomes Lee Tucker as he presents, “Initial Impact of COVID-19 on Travel, Tourism, Outdoor Recreation Varied Widely Across States and Demographic Groups.”
In this presentation, Tucker shows how the U.S. Census Bureau’s Quarterly Workforce Indicators (QWI) was used to examine how workers employed in travel, tourism, and outdoor recreation across the country were affected by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Data indicate that states with the largest COVID-19 outbreaks (northeastern and mid-Atlantic states) and those with the largest share of tourism jobs (Nevada and Hawaii) were disproportionately impacted at the start of the pandemic. Even workers who retained their jobs experienced earnings losses of up to 40%. Comparisons across demographic groups also show that the reductions in earnings and employment in travel, tourism, and outdoor recreation were disproportionately borne by women and younger employees.
About our presenter:
Lee Tucker is an Economist in the Center for Economic Studies, Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics (LEHD) Research Group. His research interests include a range of topics such as domestic outsourcing, veterans’ labor market outcomes, the impacts of local labor market concentration, and the impacts of unionization. He helped to launch the LEHD’s Veteran Employment Outcomes (VEO) data product, and he is currently focused on efforts to update and improve the production of the LEHD snapshot for researcher use. Lee joined the U.S. Census Bureau in 2018 upon completion of a PhD in Economics from Boston University. He also holds a BA in Economics from Carleton College, and he served as a Staff Economist at the White House Council of Economic Advisers from 2012-2013.
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Beginner R Training: Starts in 28 Days
Beginner R Training: Data Science for Community, Workforce, and Economic Development Research
February 8, 10, 15, 17, 22, 24
4:30 PM – 6:30 PM ET
Training Begins in 28 Days!
Are you sick and tired of manually manipulating data in Excel? Are you eager to level up your data science programming by learning the most widely used open-source statistical analysis language? CIC’s Introduction to R workshop will provide a complete crash course on the full data science workflow, from cleaning and wrangling to visualization. Two RStudio Certified Tidyverse instructors will cover the essentials of popular R packages, including ggplot2, tidyr, dplyr, tidymodels, and rmarkdown. Code will be made available to attendees via RStudio Cloud before and after this hands-on-keyboard session, allowing beginner-level users to dive right in and revisit materials after training.
No programming experience is required for the workshop; however, interested attendees are encouraged to explore the online book R for Data Science, which can be found at here. The curriculum will be tailored to the CIC audience, featuring BLS data and easy ways to include economics and labor data in your code.
Please note:
All training classes will be hosted through Zoom with live instructors.
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Last Chance to Register: Virtual Business Development Engagement Tool
C2ER 2021 Research Awards Webinar Series:
How the Detroit Regional Partnership Transformed a Traditional Industry Cluster Analysis into a Virtual Business Development Engagement Tool
Last Chance to Register!
October 26, 20212:00 PM – 3:00 PM ET
The interactive industry cluster business cases developed by the Detroit Regional Partnership (DRP), have been instrumental in shifting our business attraction efforts virtually. The tool is used to engage global companies, site location decision makers, as well as regional stakeholders, with our key industry clusters in a dynamic way that has increased connections for business development and resulted in business growth. Join the webinar to hear the highlights on the cluster strategy, data analysis, technology integration, story-telling marketing and more.
Speakers:
Jessica Worley, Research Manager, Detroit Regional Partnership
Julia Anderson, GIS Coordinator, Detroit Regional Partnership
Pricing: Free
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New Webinar – Virtual Business Development Engagement Tool
C2ER 2021 Research Awards Webinar Series:
How the Detroit Regional Partnership Transformed a Traditional Industry Cluster Analysis into a Virtual Business Development Engagement Tool
October 26, 20212:00 PM – 3:00 PM ET
The interactive industry cluster business cases developed by the Detroit Regional Partnership (DRP), have been instrumental in shifting our business attraction efforts virtually. The tool is used to engage global companies, site location decision makers, as well as regional stakeholders, with our key industry clusters in a dynamic way that has increased connections for business development and resulted in business growth. Join the webinar to hear the highlights on the cluster strategy, data analysis, technology integration, story-telling marketing and more.
Speakers:
Jessica Worley, Research Manager, Detroit Regional Partnership
Julia Anderson, GIS Coordinator, Detroit Regional Partnership
Pricing: Free
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COVID-19 & The Labor Market: Equitable Recovery Through Human Infrastructure
Dr. Angela Jackson opened C2ER’s panel entitled Gender, Race, and Ethnicity: The impact of COVID-19 on the Labor Market Recession and Recovery. Dr. Jackson has led New Profit’s Future of Work Initiative, a movement seeking to close the career-readiness gap for Americans from low-income backgrounds. She recently launched a $6 million Future of Work Grand Challenge to rapidly reskill 25,000 displaced workers into living-wage jobs. One of her first initiatives Dr. Jackson highlighted, the Global Language Project, involved giving underestimated students proficiency in a second language. Skills associated with learning a second language, especially cultural competency, can unlock access to much more than a language (postsecondary schools, employment). Such investment is an example of what Dr. Jackson called human ‘infrastructure’. In fact, she framed the panel with a profound question: What kind of human infrastructure does America have for its 70 million underestimated workers (especially workers from low-income and non-white households)?
Dr. Jackson highlighted how the education and employment sector is a ‘leaky pipeline’, not responding rapidly enough to meet the demands of the future of work. She also stated that 80% of employers’ development dollars are spent on their highest wage-earning employees. To drive home the point, she mentioned how her previous company didn’t really need to pay for her further education. Despite coming from a working-class family, given her salary, she could have afforded it (while many lower-salaried workers can’t). Instead of poaching for talent, Dr. Jackson also promoted that companies should grow talent from within—a reminder of economic development’s challenge between forward-looking strategies of growth-from-within and traditional ‘smokestack-chasing’.
1,200 innovators applied to Dr. Jackson’s Future of Work Grand Challenge. This led to her organization funding over 200 mostly tech-based wrap-around training programs involving artificial and virtual reality, and personalized learning to meet the needs of employers. Dr. Jackson stressed teamwork and partnerships needed to realize such an initiative, with a call to action for building power and capacity within communities researchers and funders work with. In her words, “proximity (to a community) is expertise”. Her initiative has worked with Walmart, Accenture, Goodwill, workforce boards, and nearly 1,600 job centers.
Oriane Casale, Interim Director of the Labor Market Information Office of the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED) continued the conversation. Oriane presented data her department produced on unemployment claims of workers in Minnesota. DEED found that 75% of workers who claimed unemployment income (UI) at the start of the pandemic in Minnesota were reemployed by the third quarter. Of these, 59% were recalled by their same employer (of which 33% were subsequently furloughed). 7% found work at a previous employer, and 9% changed employers (on average, seeing greater wage losses). 21% continued to request benefits, and 3% stopped claiming UI.
DEED found that part-time, low-wage, and black workers were those least likely to be recalled by employers. Temporary help and information industries were the sectors least likely to recall workers (only 25% of those laid off), while manufacturing and health care the most likely to (81%). One of the most interesting points Oriane made was that most workers in the leisure and hospitality industry who found a new job went into temporary help (9%) and retail (23%). This ‘reshuffling’ helps paint a more nuanced picture of what may be occurring with long-term UI claims. As every industry was affected by the pandemic, reshuffling can cause intense competition for the lowest-skilled workers. The few temp-help and retail positions available post-pandemic are being filled by displaced workers with potentially higher credentials. Re-entering familiar positions in the labor market can become especially difficult for the lowest-skilled/credentialed displaced workers, facilitating long-term UI claims—emphasizing the need for an equitable human infrastructure to upskill workers.
Dr. Till Von Wachter, Professor of Economics, Faculty Director of the California Policy Lab (CPL) and Director of the Census Research Data Center at UCLA, closed the panel. Prof. von Wachter’s research examined the long-term costs of job loss, the consequences of long-term unemployment, and the effects of UI on workers. During the crisis, Prof. von Wachter and his CPL team published monthly reports on the state of the UI system using data from California that has received national attention. Dr. Wachter carried on the conversation of UI claims with a detailed research, county by county, across California. Dr. Wachter emphasized how long-term unemployment (LTU) leads to lower reemployment wages, hence, it is crucial we understand what may be causing individuals to continue claiming UI. Perhaps one of the most interesting points Dr. Wachter raised was that although being black was correlated with higher UI claims, this varied county to county. Educational attainment, a worker’s industry, population density, limited English, available transportation, broadband, number of COVID-19 cases, self-employment, and population age all played into influencing long-term UI claims. Dr. Wachter drove home the point that the factors and motivations surrounding long-term unemployment are far more complex than what is commonly heard. Crucial to equitably overcoming them is investing in all the components of that fundamental human infrastructure Dr. Jackson spoke of—from languages to broadband, credentials, and employer investment.
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Federal Partners Panel: An Update from Agency Leaders
Dr. Mary Bohman, Acting Director and Deputy Director of the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), Dr. William Beach, Commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), and Dr. Ron Jarmin, Acting Director of the U.S. Census Bureau, gathered at the 61st Annual C2ER Conference and LMI Institute Forum’s Federal Partners Panel event to discuss the current work of their respective agencies, new innovations in data collection and dissemination, and the future of work and data-driven economic and workforce development.
Dr. Bohman, Dr. Beach, and Dr. Jarmin recognize the need for granular and timely data. Dr. Bohman stated that BEA is prioritizing the expansion of state and local data, high-quality statistics and data, and meeting user needs by providing disaggregated data, and additional product, geographic, and industry data. BEA is also phasing out data collection by mail and instead focusing on text and email survey response data collection methods, as well as purchasing data from private companies.
Dr. Jarmin, with the U.S. Census Bureau, also spoke to a need for innovative data collection methods. “I think all three agencies (U.S. Census Bureau, BEA, and BLS) are involved in new ways to look at new sources of data… [including] additional administrative data and private data sources,” said Dr. Jarmin. Other priorities at the U.S. Census Bureau include adding new content relating to changes in labor market and productivity and creating products that meet the needs of non-traditional data users.
“I hope everyone knows the future of our work is more granular, more frequent, and [involving the use of] new data sources,” Dr. Beach stated during the event. To that end, BLS, according to Dr. Beach, is focusing on new and innovative data collection methods, such as utilizing Unemployment Insurance (UI) data from states. Dr. Beach speculated there would likely be UI reform efforts at the state policy level or in Congress and perhaps some future opportunities for utilizing UI data in a collaborative effort between BLS and state government agencies.
Changes in Data Products by U.S. Census, BLS, and BEA
Pulse Surveys by the U.S. Census Bureau might not be a permanent product, says Dr. Jarmin, as the data collection is burdensome to users. But while the Pulse Surveys may be impractical in the long term, Dr. Jarmin stated the U.S. Census Bureau is committed to quickly designing and implementing novel and helpful surveys during times of emergency—as the agency did with the Pulse Surveys during the COVID-19 crisis. In other news, the U.S. Census Bureau will also begin collecting data on state marijuana tax revenue collected by states where marijuana is legalized.
For BLS, new data product updates include the release of monthly data from the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS), where users can find experimental estimates for all 50 states and the District of Columbia for the total nonfarm level job openings, hires, and separations. The first round of JOLTS monthly data was released in June of 2021. And finally, Dr. Bohman announced that BEA, for the first time, will release official statistics of real personal consumption expenditures beginning on December 14, 2021.
Overall, leadership from the U.S. Census Bureau, BLS, and BEA emphasized their commitment to finding innovative data collection and infrastructure methods to provide fast, specific, and disaggregated data to assist local and state applied workforce and economic development researchers.
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Announcing the Spring/Summer Learning Series
<!–<!–<!–Two New Training Classes
<!–<!–Analyzing Sector Skill Needs
<!–<!–Leadership in Research Workshop:
Developing and Managing a Research Team
<!–<!–May 4, 6, 13, 2021
<!–<!–June 22 & 29; July 20 & 27;
August 10 & 24, 2021
<!–<!–2:00 PM – 4:00 PM ET
<!–<!–2:30 PM – 4:00 PM ET
<!–<!–<!–<!–<!–<!–Photo by Paul Hanaoka on Unsplash
<!–<!–Photo by Standsome Worklifestyle on Unsplash
<!–<!–Given the importance of cluster or sector strategies, applied researchers are increasingly asked to provide detailed examinations of the occupational and skill needs of specific industries. Through a series of lectures, exercises and discussions, this course will lead participants through the process of analyzing the workforce needs of their region’s key economic drivers. Participants will learn how to connect industries to occupations, and then occupations to key skills and certifications. Workshop participants will also learn how to synthesize this information so that they can inform their region’s education and training efforts in a compelling manner.
<!–<!–This workshop brings directors and managers of economic and workforce development research together. Through facilitated discussions, scenario-based group exercises, and open peer-to-peer exchanges, participants will hone their skills in strategic planning, team management and development, and budgeting. The course will impart innovative strategies and tools for diffusing challenging situations, expanding research networks, and attracting new resources, and communicating effectively with internal and external customers.
<!–<!–Note: the course will include presenting a small project to the course attendees. People may pre-record if they would like and still attend in person for feedback.
<!–<!–Note: This workshop will include breakout rooms for small peer group discussion.
<!–<!–<!–<!–<!–<!–Please note:
All training classes will be hosted through Zoom with live instructors.
<!–<!–Questions? Contact us
For more information on course content, please contact Jennie Allison. For questions on registrations and/or logistics please contact Spencer Abrams.
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