A new initiative seeks to gauge the workforce shortage and help close the gap between in-demand jobs and qualified candidates.
Talent Forecast is an eight-month study that began in July 2018 as a coordinated effort to better understand and measure the labor crunch.
The study comes in response to over two decades of conclusions from economic and workforce development 
partners which uniformly warn that northeast Minnesota and northwest Wisconsin are facing a looming, if not active, workforce shortage.
Many local employers currently report extreme difficulty in finding qualified candidates for their open jobs, suggesting that the workforce shortage is already established. Due to a number of economic and societal factors, including an outflux of Baby Boomers exiting the workforce faster than younger workers can replace them, the workforce shortage is only expected to intensify in coming years.
APEX, the IRRRB, the Blandin Foundation, and the Northland Foundation are working together with Minnesota Power, the Northeast Minnesota Office of Job Training, and the Workforce Development Boards in Duluth and northwest Wisconsin to coordinate the study, which will be conducted by the Center for Regional Economic Competitiveness (CREC).
Projected to conclude in March 2019, Talent Forecast is anticipated to inform workforce development decision-making for years to come on how best to position the region to compete for talent in the long-term.
Learn more about Talent Forecast at the initiative’s website: https://regionaltalentforecast.com/.
