Announcing The State of Our Workforce: Western NC
Over the last several months, we’ve talked a lot about the skills gap, or the lack of workers with the right skills and experience needed for your open positions. The quality of our current and future workforce is a critically important piece of North Carolina’s success and an empty talent pipeline is not only unacceptable—it’s dangerous. Thursday morning in Asheville, we joined business leaders and others from Western NC in taking matters into our own hands.
Today, I’m proud to announce the launch of our state’s second regional workforce analysis and a new program called The State of Our Workforce.
The State of Our Workforce is a regional initiative with statewide ramifications that aims to help stakeholders better understand their workforce challenges by providing data specific to their area. It was launched first as a local study in the Triangle by the Capital Area Workforce Development Board, City of Raleigh, Greater Raleigh Chamber of Commerce, Wake County Economic Development and others. You can read more and see all the groups here.
Now, building on the great work of those organizations, the North Carolina Chamber Foundation is scaling the program statewide, and we’re taking it to the mountains first. The State of Our Workforce: Western NC is a collaboration between the Asheville Area Chamber of Commerce, the Mountain Area Workforce Development Board, the Economic Development Coalition of Asheville-Buncombe County, and the Economic Development Partnership of NC. The study will be conducted by RTI International and will officially begin in July. We’re grateful to these groups for their leadership and support in launching this analysis.
The data and insights we’ll gain from the State of Our Workforce analysis will help guide regional solutions that work best for businesses, workers, students, and educators in Western North Carolina, but they’ll also help inform statewide policy and decision-making. We’re proud to support these groups as they take this critical step toward solving our workforce challenges, and look forward to seeing the results!
If you’re interested in learning more or launching a regional workforce analysis in your area, please contact Andrew Meehan.