Ed Gordon's article makes a good point. It will be leveraging regional collaborations that will drive success in the workforce arena. CareerSource Capital Region is part of the Florida Georgia Workforce Alliance that consists of three workforce boards in north Florida and three in south Georgia.

The state structures that govern our workforce efforts are very different, however, we are looking toward leveraging our resources in the training provider area and in the business services area. Both areas seem to hold an opportunity to leverage and combine efforts to assist multi-site businesses in more than one workforce area to provide services and approve needed skills training that can be used across all six workforce areas.

The data continues to show that vacancies in skilled positions go unfilled nationwide. Locally, some business owners are realizing that apprenticeships can be a great answer to filling their talent needs and the worker earns a wage while going to class. The is no "college debt" in Florida. If you are in an apprenticeship, the training is free.

This opportunity should be considered by every parent before they push their child on to college. Technical colleges, like Lively Technical College, offer a wide variety of hands-on skills training to good-paying jobs. Welding is in high demand as is IT technicians. Healthcare continues to have a slew of openings that the hospitals find hard to fill.

Some of the root causes for these openings are 1)Low wages, 2) Lack of a skill centered pipeline developed in the K-12 system, low unemployment locally that translates into fewer people in the job searching pool. 

CareerSource Capital Region is looking to lead the region with innovation in technology, an integrated services approach to benefit the career seeker and business solution that adds value to the employer community.

From my friend, Ed Gordon

"Introducing the Gordon Principle for Regional Development"

In 1967 Laurence J. Peter developed a proposition that rapidly gained such recognition that it became known as The Peter Principle: Anything that works (ideas, people, machines) will be used in progressively more challenging situations until it fails.

The example of this principle inspired me to attempt to encapsulate my basic thinking on the forces central to the health of regional economic and workforce development. Here is the Gordon Principle: For sustainable economic viability, regions need to develop education-to-employment systems aligned to labor-market changes.

In the United States, over 10 million jobs remain vacant while there is growing unrest among Americans who are either unemployed or underemployed. This is feeding populism of the left and right and the development of a variety of scapegoats to blame for their plight. However, in my opinion, the basic culprit is escalating technological change. Change is never easy for individuals, organizations, or societies. The key component in the Gordon Principle is keeping labor-market demands and education and training programs in alignment.  Public-private partnerships that feature cross-sector collaboration are vital for identifying changes in labor-market demands and then making corresponding changes in the education-to-employment pipeline.

There are U.S. communities that are supporting intense public-private regional collaborations that are rebuilding their local talent pipelines. These initiatives promote systemic changes that are providing educational preparation to more people for a job market that continues to demand more learning. Here are two examples.

Chicago, IL  Manufacturing Connect is a program operated by Manufacturing Renaissance. This intermediary includes 55 local manufacturing employers and three inner-city Chicago Public High Schools. Manufacturing Connect offers manufacturing technology classes through which participants can earn industry credentials and college credits, obtain work experience opportunities with local manufacturing firms, and access a wide variety of supportive services. Funders include the U.S. Department of Labor, the Illinois Department of Commerce & Economic Opportunity, foundations, Boeing and 22 local manufacturers.

Charleston, SC  Charleston Regional Youth Apprenticeships is a partnership among 4 local high school districts, Trident Technical College, 122 employers, Apprenticeship Carolina, the Charleston Metro Chamber of Commerce, and the Charleston Regional Development Alliance. This is a two-year program in which high-school juniors take academic classes at their high schools in the morning, go to Trident Tech for career-specific courses in the afternoon, and work part-time at a business during the school year and full-time during the summer.

Although the federal government recently has added more programs supporting career education, the major question remains, "How can we bring to scale public-private collaborations that establish and maintain regional talent-delivery systems for 21st-century jobs and careers?"

The next Gordon Report will explore some of the major cultural roadblocks that must be cleared away to advance the critical components of systemic change.

Edward E. Gordon is president and founder of Imperial Consulting Corporation (www.imperialcorp.com). His book, Future Jobs: Solving the Employment and Skills Crisis, winner of an Independent Publishers award, is now available in an updated 2018 paperback edition.