Common Challenges a Sector Initiative Can Address

Sector initiatives offer a mechanism to meet the skill needs of regional industries, and provide job opportunities to workers in those regions. They address at least five common challenges, presented below.

Challenge #1: Single-employer focus.

Traditionally, workforce and economic development systems focus on single employers, rather than industries. This is challenging for three reasons: first, public and private resources are spread thin, and simply cannot meet the individual needs of every employer in a region adequately; second, thin resources are often spent unwisely when services are duplicated to meet similar needs of individual, separate firms; and finally, by operating within a single-employer framework, public systems struggle to reach economies of scale.

Challenge #2: Informal Mechanisms to Support Growth of Regional Industries

Public education, workforce and economic development systems often struggle to identify the high-growth industries in their region. Once identified, they may find it difficult to justify a focus on those industries. The result is a thinly spread focus on all industries, and a lack of formalized attention to the industries that provide the most potential for economic growth and jobs for local residents.

Challenge #3: Arbitrary regional boundaries.

The geographic lines drawn by public education, workforce, and economic development systems often reside within geopolitical boundaries such as cities, counties or school districts, rather than aligning with natural labor market areas. This limits the true capacity of public systems to support industries and workers, both of which operate based on the multitude of factors that define a labor market region. Factors might include commuting patterns, proximity to airports and other major transportation routes, or concentration of firms within the same industry, among others. Employers may in fact be deterred from engagement with public systems if faced with a need to work with a seemingly arbitrary workforce development entity or economic development agency.

Challenge #4: Lack of coordination across systems and stakeholders.

For state and local public systems, separate missions, funding streams, and structures make it difficult to focus on the complex, larger challenges that confront a regional economy. Without a mechanism for coordination across various stakeholders and systems, the opportunity is lost to collaborate, coordinate information and leverage resources in ways that address regional challenges.

Challenge #5: Lack of Meaningful Employer Engagement.

The “dual customer” approach utilized by workforce development agencies has significantly changed and improved how local industry is supplied with needed workers. In most areas, however, a key challenge is a set of missing tools that meaningfully engage industry in ways that close the short- and long-term gaps between needed and available skills. As a result, employers often look elsewhere to meet their needs by either leaving an area or recruiting workers from other areas or states. The risks in this scenario are two-fold: industries discouraged with their current location and public systems, and local workers left out of job opportunities.

Browse the links and resources on the next page for more information on the structure and benefits of sector approaches.