TAA Petitions
Recent petition activity:
- Certified by DOL
- 94193 - Boston Scientific Corporation (aka American Medical Systems), Minnetonka **Only Product Surveillance Department (Quality Function), including on-site leased workers from Talent Choice, was certified
- 94364 - Ditech Financial LLC, St Paul **Loan Servicing Group was certified; Risk & Compliance group engaged in activities related to the supply of research and data compilation services was denied.
- Pending DOL’s investigation
- 94202 – DLR Group, Minneapolis
- 94532 – Adam’s Publishing Group, Coon Rapids
TAA Training Application Tip
TAA is going to provide tips for each section of the training application in the coming editions of Partner Express. Each TAA training application needs to meet the Six Criteria for Approval. March’s tip relates Criteria #3 “It is reasonable to expect that you will be employed following completion of training.” It is important that the Labor Market Information (LMI) for the Future Employment Outlook section be for the region the customer intends to seek employment in after completing training. TAA suggests using this LMI site for wage and demand: https://apps.deed.state.mn.us/lmi/cpt/Search Note: TAA cannot accept an “All Other” category so talk with the customer to determine the occupation that best fits his/her employment goal.
Many schools provide Gainful Employment reports with LMI information for individual programs so this can also be a great place to look. Jobs listed in the Future Employment section should have titles that align with the customer’s employment goal. The credential needed section of the Future Employment section provides justification that available jobs match what that industry is requiring. The credential level should not be lower or higher than the credential being requested without additional justification comments. Lastly, the LMI, training being requested, and the jobs listed in the Future Employment section should all align and lead to the employment goal listed on the TAA training application and Individual Employment Plan (IEP).
Assessments: TAA offers COPS, CAPS, COPES
TAA requires a standardized assessment be submitted with the training application. TAA offers the COPS, CAPS, COPES free of charge to customers. If you’d like to request electronic access to the assessment for a customer, follow these steps:
- Contact the general TAA email to have TAA send an invite via email to the customer
- Customer will follow the instructions in the email to complete the assessment
- Request customer share his/her results with you
- Submit a copy of the assessment results with the TAA training application
- The COPS is an interest inventory consisting of 128 job activity items. The COPS requires about 20 minutes to complete.
- The CAPS is a timed ability test battery. There are eight ability tests each one timed for 5 minutes. It requires about 50 minutes to complete. The eighth test is a paper pencil test that you can download to give to your clients. You will need to time this, score it and give the score to your clients so that they can enter the score into their CAPS online battery.
- The COPES is a work values survey that has 80 items and requires about 20 minutes to complete.
- Note that customers are not required to answer all items at one time. They can start and stop at any time on the COPS and COPES and return to finish them. The CAPS tests can be stopped between tests but not during a five minute timed segment.
Staffing updates
Mary Garcia accepted the Foreign Labor Coordinator position on the Employer Services team effective February 14th. Mary has been a TAA Specialist since 2016 and the TAA team will miss her greatly. She’ll be excellent in her new role!
Crystal Nickles accepted the TAA Outreach and Support Specialist position and started February 27th. She’ll be coordinating outreach activities to TAA customers and designing and implementing continuous improvement projects. When you call or email the general TAA line, she will likely be the one to respond. Crystal is currently working on a Master of Public Administration through the University of North Dakota. Welcome, Crystal!
Topics you’d like addressed?
The Partner Express is a resource designed with you in mind. If you have suggestions on topics you’d like TAA to address, please let us know! We are here to help: deed.taa@state.mn.us or call 651-259-7543.
The Office of Adult Career Pathways (ACP)
Quarterly Reports:
Quarterly Progress Report for Adult/DW, and Adult Career Pathways were due to program staff on January 20th :
- o These reports are meant to be provide a high-level overview and updates.
- o Please send your Quarterly Reports in as soon as possible.
Reimbursement Payment Requests/Financial Status Reports (RPR’s/FSRs):
· Reimbursement Payment Requests/Financial Status Reports are due for each month, by the 20th of the following month. Thank you for getting these in on time and please remember that if you have not spent money in any given month –populate the RPR/FSR with $0.00.
Monitoring Visits:
· Please watch out for e-mails related to upcoming monitoring visits:
o Staff are sending out dates for visits
Ongoing Technical Assistance:
- Budget and Work Plan Modifications: As a reminder, modification requests must be submitted for approval and fully executed before they can be implemented and are not retroactive. Modifications are effective from the date of full execution (last signature) moving forward. If you need to submit a modification, please contact your coordinator.
Corner on the Market: The Impact of Automation
A recent article from Luke Greiner published in Minnesota Economic Trends examines the impact of automation in Minnesota. With near-record low unemployment rates and a labor force growing much slower than in the past, could automation be the boost Minnesota needs to maintain its global economic position? At odds with that view and our current labor force situation, is the notion that new technologies will destroy so many jobs that our labor market will be systematically dismantled by robots. Many discussions about the future of work result in conclusions that are not only far-fetched, but unhelpful.
This article leverages the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF) analysis of occupations and its index of how ‘at risk’ each occupation is of being impacted by automation. With an increasing amount of research on this topic, analyses range from hardly concerning to widespread unemployment. The ITIF analysis is a plausible, middle-of-the-road assessment of how technology will impact different occupations.
The ITIF analysis relies on Bureau of Labor Statistics employment projections in conjunction with its own analysis of 840 occupations, and assigns a risk level to each on a scale of 1 to 5. Merging the ITIF occupational risk indicator with other data produced by DEED, including employment, wages, educational requirements, and employment projections, provides a reasonable perspective on how technology will impact Minnesota’s labor market.
The ITIF’s risk index covers virtually every occupation recognized by official employment data. Using this index, Minnesota has a smaller relative concentration of occupations most at risk to be impacted by automation compared to the nation. Using the most recent employment data, 7.8 percent of jobs in Minnesota have a high risk of being automated, more than a full percentage point less than the U.S. share. The moderately high-risk category contains the largest share of jobs in Minnesota (33.5 percent of employment), followed by moderately low-risk (28 percent of employment). Worth noting is that there are more than twice as many jobs in occupations with the lowest risk of automation compared to the highest-risk category. Only 44 occupations fall into the high-risk category, according to ITIF, but combined they total 213,290 jobs. (Figure 1).
Even for occupations identified as high-risk or moderately high-risk, it is unlikely that employment in entire occupations will be eliminated; instead, many of these occupations will be augmented by technology to increase productivity. The following link shows the estimated risk of automation for all occupations in Minnesota based on the ITIF analysis: https://public.tableau.com/profile/magda.olson#!/vizhome/Greiner_Automation/Story1
UNIT DIRECTORY
Marc Majors – Deputy Employment and Training Programs Director, 651-259-7595
Nancy Omondi-Director of Adult Programs (WIOA Adult, Dislocated Worker, TAA, and Adult Career Pathways), 651-259-7525
Jacqueline Buck-Director of Employer Services (Rapid Response), 651-259-7598
Adult Career Pathways Team
Cindy Boyle – Monitor, 651-259-7596
Lynn Dahn - Employment and Training Program Coordinator, 651-259-7529
Ann Meyers - Grant Coordinator, 651 259- 7174
Amy Miller – Monitor, 651-259-7575
Claire Nelligan –Monitor, 651-259-7573
Vanessa Roman - Grant Coordinator, 651-259-7578
Dislocated Worker and Federal Adult Programs Team Lensa Idossa – Supervisor, 651-259-7509
Amy Carlson – Performance Coordinator, 651-259-7542
Thomas Sommer - TAA Performance and Financials Specialist, 651-259-7585
Claudia Ursulescu Kracht – Grants Specialist Senior, Federal Grants, 651-259-7532
Heather Moore – Grants Specialist Senior, State Grants, 651-259-7560
Kokulo James Supuwood – Monitor, 651-259-7586
Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) Team
General TAA email: deed.taa@state.mn.us, 651-259-7543 or 888-234-1330 Sarah Saito - Supervisor, 651-259-7546
Olajide Williams - Senior TAA Specialist, 651-259-7431
Jennifer Anderson - TAA Specialist, 651-259-7690
Mohamed Farah - TAA Specialist, 651-259-7505
Crystal Nickles - TAA Specialist, 651-259-7553
Laurie Larson - TAA Specialist, 651-259-7681
Ann Malz – TAA Specialist, 651-259-7593
Claudette Parchment-Roehrich - TAA Specialist, 651-259-7516
Jaclyn Umlauf - TAA Specialist, 218-739-7560 Trade Readjustment Allowance: deed.tra@state.mn.us 651-296-3644 or 877-898-9090 (ask for TRA Specialist)
Rapid Response Team General RR Contact, 651-259-7537
Jason Wadell - Coordinator, 651-259-7552
Marla Beaty - TAA Liaison, 218-259-1380
Liz McLoone - Labor Liaison, 651-259-7145
Mee Yang - Senior Specialist, 651-259-7548
John Mohs – Senior Specialist, 651-259-7535
Laura Dale – Senior Specialist, 651-259-7519
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