Create a regional workforce strategy
Improving worker mobility for regional workforces.
A healthy regional labor market relies on worker mobility
Small, medium, and large companies are key producers of talent and rely on shared talent pools in regional contexts. When workers transition from one job to another, they bring transferable skills and build new skills that are valuable to their current and future employers.
Workers often move to new roles in their old company’s community, supply chain, or customer base, creating a natural talent pool from which employers can draw future hires.
When employers take a collective interest in the health of the talent pipeline across their region, they advance their business goals, support workers’ career trajectories, and contribute to the broader regional labor market.
For more than half the workforce, mobility has been in a sustained decline
STARs – workers who are Skilled Through Alternative Routes rather than a bachelor’s degree – have historically relied on job transitions to leverage their skills for higher wages and career mobility. STARs are even more local than the overall workforce: 92% of STARs live and work in the same county.
However, over the past three decades, doors have closed to workers without degrees. Upwardly mobile transitions are not the norm for STARs; in fact, less than 40% of individual job transitions end in higher-wage roles for STARs.
The impact has been devastating to STARs’ economic mobility and detrimental to the labor market. When half the labor market is not able to deploy their skills, they cannot reach their full potential. The workforce is weaker for it — and businesses suffer.
Three key players shape regional workforce strategy
