LVEDC Director of Talent Supply Karianne Gelinas

Each week, Karianne Gelinas, Director of Talent Supply with the Lehigh Valley Economic Development Corporation (LVEDC), will provide an update and additional information about its ongoing initiative to identify talent supply and demand issues in the region and create a strategy that results in a broader, ongoing understanding of the Lehigh Valley workforce. (See past updates.)

A recent report by the U.S. Federal Reserve System recommends the exact efforts currently underway in our study, which validates and underscores the importance of our ongoing talent supply initiative.

In a newly-released study called “Investing in America’s Workforce: Report on Workforce Development Needs and Opportunities,” the Federal Reserve System recommends a better alignment of workforce development and economic development efforts using sector strategies.

The exact recommendation reads:

“Sector strategies” are regional approaches to workforce and economic development that focus resources on the needs of a defined industry important to the local economy. Sector partnerships include various stakeholders from local and regional employers, academic institutions, and training providers coming together to analyze an industry’s current and future skill requirements. These types of economic development strategies take a systemic rather than a transactional view and have the potential to yield a trained workforce that not only supports business attraction and retention but also creates local opportunities for unemployed and underemployed residents.

The full Federal Reserve System study can be found here.

Click here to read more about LVEDC’s ongoing talent supply initiative. Click here to see previous talent supply initiative updates.