Workforce Developments

Unemployment zooms past 10 percent

2009-11-06T09:04:47-08:00

Much to the surprise of experts, and in the wake of seemingly good economic news yesterday, the Department of Labor released stats today showing the unemployment rate at 10.2 percent. This is the first time U.S. unemployment has been above 10 percent since 1983. To find unemployment that high before then, you have to dig all the way back to before World War II.

It had been looking like we might get through 2009 without getting into double digits. Instead, I think we're going to have a tough holiday season. The Dow can't stay above 10,000 for long with numbers like these.

Yesterday's Senate passage of another unemployment extension seems especially timely (wonder if folks in Congress got an early heads-up on the BLS data). President Obama will likely sign it soon.

It also begs the question of whether expanding unemployment benefits is enough. It certainly doesn't pay enough to live on long term, so it's questionable how much the extension can keep consumer spending alive. I've heard talk of a possible tax credit for job creation, or even large, federal public works projects along the lines of the New Deal era.

If you add in the number of people who are working part-time when they'd prefer full-time, and those "marginally attached" to employment, we're looking at 17.5 percent of Americans who don't have the jobs they need.

I'm going to keep singing this tune until I get everyone to sing along with me: if the recovery depends on consumer spending, then the recovery depends on jobs.

Are we doing enough to create them?

In time for the holidays: another unemployment extension

2009-11-05T22:19:59-08:00

The Senate passed HR 3548 on Thursday, ensuring at least an additional 14 weeks of coverage for Americans at risk of losing their unemployment benefits. That is, as soon as President Obama signs it into law. He's expected to do that within days, possibly as early as Friday.

It's good news for unemployed Americans and their families, and for the economy at large. Economists say the recovery depends on consumer spending, which will only fall if unemployed workers are left to hang in the wind. It's not as good as a true jobs-creation program, but it's better than nothing.

Experts expect Friday's data release from the U.S. Labor Department to show unemployment rising to 9.9 percent. Unemployment figures around the world don't offer any respite. With the Dow hitting 10,000 again and the U.S. economy growing at 3.5 percent over the most recent quarter, concerns are rising of a possible "jobless recovery."

Those of you who are employed, try taking it a little easier on the job. Your recent productivity gains might be making the boss think he doesn't need to hire your friends or family.

WPA photo source: Wikimedia Commons

Requesting reader input on a new reentry website

2009-11-04T07:33:04-08:00

The Marin Employment Connection, the one stop in Marin County, CA, is planning to add to its new website a page that specifically targets ex-offenders.

We will include information about our Road to Work resource fairs that we do in collaboration with our Probation Department and the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, through our Reentry Taskforce. We will be able to publicize upcoming events and share the directory of resource providers online.

What other information or resources should we include? Have you found any websites to be particularly helpful to ex-offenders in their job search? If so, please let me know about them!

Racy Ming is manager of the Marin Employment Connection, the one-stop in Marin County, CA. She is also chair of the board for the California Re-Entry Program at San Quentin.

A final post from the Washington conference

2009-11-03T06:05:00-08:00

Talk about timing. On the first day of the Washington State Workforce and Economic Development Conference Boeing shunned its long-time home in Seattle to announce it would expand production of its 787 in South Carolina. The next morning, Jeff Finkle of the International Economic Development Council tried to put a positive spin on it - at least there's still some manufacturing taking place in the U.S. I don't think a lot of people in Spokane were buying it.

Finkle also said he didn't think Congress ultimately will pass bills creating tax credits for job creation to address the economic downturn. The administration, he said, is more focused right now on not digging the deficit hole any deeper.

Linda Lawson of the National Governors Association offered a different view. She said she's been in meetings at the Treasury and at the White House domestic policy office where the possibility of large WPA-style public works projects to get Americans back to work have been discussed.

In case you're keeping count, I've been advocating this since early 2007 when the problems of unemployment, underemployment and wages not keeping up with the cost of living were already clear. My new New Deal would include investments in putting people back rebuilding our education and health care systems, alongside investments in physical infrastructure. Data and analysis from Washington's own chief economist suggests that jobs are the key to the economic recovery, so I hope Finkle has it wrong.

Later in the day I went to a workshop on jobs in the health sector where I learned

Medical technology is creating new jobs, but it's also making others like medical record clerk obsolete
Health care careers aren't for everyone - don't encourage people to go into health care just because that's where the jobs are right now
Washington state has done an exemplary job of creating articulation agreements allowing people to work up nursing career ladder from licensed practical nurse to associates degree in nursing to bachelor's degree and beyond

My big takeaways on ARRA from Heather Moss in Governor Gregoire's office:

Efforts to stabilize the economy are either building the plane as we fly it, or trying to put a pig through a python, depending on who you ask
The 2011-13 state budget is looking pretty dismal (surprise!)
Wisconsin and Alaska are doing a notably good job of tracking ARRA grant opportunities on their state recovery act websites - a good resource for everyone nationally

Finally, I have to give a big personal shout-out to David Harrison, who was given the Lifetime Achievement Award for Workforce and Economic Best Practices. Well deserved!

And, as the Washington Secretary of Health Mary Selecky reminded us in the closing ceremony: If you get sick, stay home!

Handouts: Social media and workforce + economic development

2009-11-02T20:19:39-08:00

Thanks to everyone who participated in my workshop on last week on Social Media and Web 2.0 at the Washington State Workforce and Economic Development Conference in Spokane. If you didn't get a copy of the handouts or if you want to share them with a colleague, you can view or download them here:

Social Media and Workforce + Economic Development -

The full slideshow will be posted soon.

The recovery depends on consumer spending

2009-10-29T16:13:22-07:00

That's according to Dr. Arun Raha, Washington state's Chief Economist.

Having heard him speak, I have to agree Dr. Raha is a bit of an unexpected rock star. He put a whole lot of scary charts and graphs up on giant screens around the ballroom as we ate, but nobody lost their lunch. What's more, his agency has one of the most retro-cool websites I've seen in a long time: Washington State Economic and Revenue Forecast Council.

If you remember when all of the World Wide Web looked like that, raise your hand.

Couple of big-ticket items I took away from Dr. Raha's talk:

It's almost certain that the recession ended in August, but employment, consumer spending and government revenue collection are all still fragile and will lag behind.
Unemployment will continue to rise until some time in spring.
In Washington, government revenues from taxes will improve in 2011 but they won't return to 2008 levels until 2012.
The global economy is in recovery because of more than 700 stimulus packages passed by governments around the world - the policy response to the Great Recession is working.
Real recovery from the recession in the US depends on consumer spending. If consumers don't pick up their spending soon, we're likely to see another economic downturn.

That last item is hugely important for those of us in workforce development. Consumers can't spend money they don't have, and if they don't have jobs, they won't have money. Which means that jobs are central to making sure the recovery continues.

Those of us in workforce development know this, and we know what it takes to prepare workers for good jobs. We know where the skills gaps are. We've built excellent training partnerships to prepare people in our communities to meet industry labor needs. We also know where some of the challenges are - whether it's hiring, retention or promotion practices, or the places where the training and education pipeline gets clogged up.

We need to get out there with this message. The recovery requires investment in jobs and job training. It may require government investment in job creation. Perhaps it requires businesses to take job hiring risks. Those investments will pay off with a faster recovery for all.

Creativity and the arts: vital for economic development

2009-10-29T08:27:44-07:00

Great session on Arts, Culture and Creativity as Strategies for Economic Development and Community Vitality.

How does a city develop? Lanie McMullin explained it starts with a city just being feasible - can it survive as a city. Once it's well established, then city leaders start to invest in making it more livable. Not so many cities get to the next stage: making the city memorable. She gave several great examples of how cities like Chattanooga, TN, and Louisville, KY, have used culture and the arts to develop along that continuum and grow their economy.

She also talked about how in the past, workers moved to where they jobs were, but today, employers of knowledge workers have to move to where the workers are. When Nike took over Adidas's market share, she explained, Adidas went after Nike's designer workforce. Come work for us!, they said. Move to New Jersey? No way! the workers answered. So Adidas up and moved to Portland where they could hire away their workforce.

Brenda Nienhouse of the beautiful Fox Theater in Spokane told the story of how a theater that was almost destroyed to make room for a parking lot (really? in downtown Spokane?) was saved, and how the restoration created jobs and is helping revitalize the downtown core. Local craftspeople were hired for the renovation, new hotels and restaurants have opened, and they're attracting better musicians to the local symphony. I have to say, downtown Spokane is very walkable, and all those old red brick buildings are lovely. Plus great coffeeshops.

We also learned all about the Creative Vitality Index created by the Washington State Arts Commission, explained by Kris Tucker. This index doesn't just add up all the donations and spending on nonprofit arts and use some multiplier to calculate impact on the local community. This index seeks to calculate the full creative vitality of a local community, including individual artists, arts organizations and arts businesses. They're using data from Employment Security, the Urban Institute and Claritas to do their magic.

One of the things I really like about the CVI is that it emphasizes the local. Buy from a local supplier, hire a local artist, and your CVI goes up. Buying a book from a local bookstore like Auntie's in Spokane and the Washington CVI goes up more than if you bought the same book from Amazon, even though the giant online seller is located in Washington state.

I can't do the CVI justice in this space - check it out yourself to see how it works, and how it might work in your community.

Workforce and economic development in Washington State

2009-10-29T08:05:02-07:00

Day one of the conference was great. It started with a keynote address from Eric Liu, former staff for President Bill Clinton and founder of the Guiding Lights Network. He talked about the power of imagination and innovation and what that can do in workforce and economic development. Couple of highlights from his talk (paraphrased as accurately as I could):

Instant innovation isn't possible. It's like expecting apples to appear when you haven't planted any seeds.
Expert knowledge can be an enemy of innovation. Thinking you know it all stifles imagination.
The one thing in our workforce and economy that cannot be outsourced is our capacity for imagination.

As I captured some of Liu's best lines on my twitter feed, I found a couple of other people in the room were tweeting him too - Barb Chamberlain and Yvonne Thomas.

Later in the day I went to sessions about using the arts for economic development (lesson: treat your artists as a workforce, not a tool) and how to get economic and workforce development stories into the media (things aren't looking so good there). We heard from the state's chief economist Dr. Arun Raha over lunch (recession is over, but will we survive the recovery?). More on those talks and today's events later.

If you were at the conference and learned something you'd like to share, add your comments below.

Follow the conference on Twitter

2009-10-28T10:33:46-07:00

Enjoyed a great keynote address by Eric Liu at the 2009 Washington Workforce & Economic Development Conference this morning.

You can get the details on his talk and more at http://twitter.com/workforcedev.

Be sure to check out the official conference Twitter feed @2009conference too.

See you in Spokane!

2009-10-26T12:32:06-07:00

I'm headed to Spokane, WA, this week for the Washington State Workforce and Economic Development 2009 Conference. If you're at the conference, stop by and say hello. I'll be doing a workshop on Social Networking and other Web 2.0 Tools on Wednesday afternoon at 3:15 p.m. Click for the full schedule.

If you can't make the conference, I'll be blogging and tweeting periodically to let you know what I'm learning. And I'll post my powerpoint presentation as a slideshow later in the week.

Cycling in L.A.

2009-10-23T10:00:25-07:00

I cycled to downtown L.A. this morning. There's always so much more to see from the seat of a bike than inside a car. Here are a few photos to capture the adventure. I'm also testing out a free online slideshow program.

Some of the images are related to workforce development or the economy, some aren't. Enjoy! And have a great weekend.

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Microsoft Office tips and tricks for workforce development staff

2009-10-21T06:50:05-07:00

This month, I thought I'd share some useful tips for using Microsoft Word. These are some quick tips and tricks that may help you use Microsoft Office better:

Note that this article applies to MS Word version 2000 & 2003 not version 2007 and above.

1. Say you wrote a grant proposal to fund your latest project. Throughout the document you referred to your organization as WAU, the accronym for Workforce Agencies United (a fictional name). Later, you decide you want to change all the places where it says WAU and replace it with your actual name. Ok, hold down Control and hit the letter "H" to open up the find and replace dialogue box. Enter WAU in the first empty space, and type Workforce Agencies United in the second space. Then click "Replace All." If you followed directions, all of those places were instantly changed. For more on Word's advanced find and replace tricks go to and article on the web called, "Using MS Word’s Advanced Find and Replace Function" by Tibor Környei.

2. Now you're working on a document and you want to insert a form from another document into this one. You have options; 1) you could open up the form separately, select everything, then cut and paste it into your current document, or 2) you insert your cursor where you want the new text, click on the menu bar on "Insert" then click "File," then choose the form and double click the form in the list. You may need to understand how Word uses cut and paste to preserve the formatting by reading this article.

3. Has anyone sent you a microsoft password protected file that you couldn't work on? First, make sure this is a password protected file not just a form. If it's password protected so that you can only read the document, but you can't type, then click "Tools" in the menu bar, and look about halfway down the list of options and you will see "Unprotect Document." When you click that, it will ask you to enter a password. If you have reached this far, click this article from Dave Taylor to see how to crack open that Word doc.

If, you clicked "Tools" and you saw the word "Protect Document," then you are actually just working on a form that is locked. This is easy to solve. Click "View" in the menu bar, then click "Toolbars" then click the "Forms" toolbar. On that toolbar, you will see a little padlock icon . When you click on that it will unlock the form (BINGO!). To learn more about forms click this microsoft article.

Other useful keyboard shortcuts using the Control (Ctrl) key:

Ctrl+M = indent the paragraph
Ctrl+Shift+ > or < = increase or decrease font of selected word
Ctrl+S = Save
Ctrol+C = Copy
Ctrl+X = Cut
Ctrl+V = Insert (Paste)
Ctrl+L = Left justify paragraph
Ctrl+R = Right justify paragraph
Ctrl+E = Center text
Ctrl+Shift+N = change selected text to Normal text
Ctrl+Alt+1 = change selected text to Heading 1
Ctrl+Alt+2 = change selected text to Heading 2
Ctrl+Alt+3 = change selected text to Heading 3

For more keyboard shortcuts visit this Microsoft KB article.