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(Pictured left to right) Scott Redd, Minneapolis Workforce Development Board; PUC leaders: Francisco Segovia, Autumn McDowell, Adair Mosley, and Michelle Negrete; Deb Bahr-Helgen, Director, CPED – Employment and Training ; and Julie Graves, PUC (Source: CPED)
On November 28th, CPED – Employment and Training, the Minneapolis
Workforce Development Board, and the Minneapolis Youth Council presented awards
to two agencies that have provided outstanding employment services to
Minneapolis youth and adults in 2017. The ceremony took place in Minneapolis
City Council Chambers during the meeting of the Community Development and
Regulatory Services Committee meeting.
Pillsbury United Communities (PUC), a partner of CPED –
Employment and Training for over 29 years, was recognized Youth Service Partner
of the Year for operating an impressive year-round program for aspiring Minneapolis
youth and young adults ages 14-24.
In 2017, PUC provided counseling and support for 44 young adults to
land a first job and/or to think through career choices, operated a paid
internship project for 15 participants, assisted 22 individuals to earn
industry specific credentials and helped 23 participants to gain employment.
(Pictured left to
right) Jim Roth, Minneapolis Workforce Development Board; Ruby Azurdia-Lee and
Ann Meyers, CLUES; Deb Bahr-Helgen and Merga Hunde, CPED – Employment and
Training (Source: CPED)
CLUES (Comunidades Latinas Unidas En Servicio) was selected as Adult
Service Partner of the Year for its strong performance in the Minneapolis Works
program. CLUES offers clients free job counseling, job placement, workshops, and
assistance developing job skills. While services focus on the Latino family,
staffs’ capabilities enable them to serve individuals and families from all
walks of life including new immigrants and low-income families who dream of a
better future.
In 2016, about eighty percent of CLUES’ Minneapolis Works clients
identified themselves as Hispanic or Latino. Forty-four percent were single
parents and about seventy-two percent had a high school diploma or less
education. The average wage at placement for these clients was $12.38.
But for
Jashan "Jason" Eison, the route to becoming CEO and owner wasn't
conventional.
Just when you thought you knew everything about friend and fellow board
member Jashan Eison, the Star Tribune comes out with this great article about
him. Read it all. There could be a
quiz.
DEED is legislatively mandated to produce employment and
wage outcome measurements of the more than 70 employment training programs it
runs or provides funding for. One way it does so is through its Report Card, a system tracking participant
enrollments, graduations, credentials received, job placement, retention and
wage changes. The system then compares how the training programs increased
employment, wages and credentials for participants, comparing before and after
joining the training program.
The system also makes those outcomes available based on the
level of education, race, ethnicity, gender and geography of the participants,
demonstrating how the programs are leading the unemployed and underemployed to
industry-recognized credentials while also meeting the demand of employers.
“People are able to find employment as a result of their
participation in the program,” said Rachel Vilsack, agency and performance
manager at DEED. “They’re seeing some type of wage gain or quality in their
employment.”
Learn more.
The Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic
Development (DEED) has set aside more than $160 million to fund job training
and placement programs in the 2018 fiscal year — an amount exceeding 30 percent
of the agency’s $485.4 million budget.
That's on top of the more than $205 million the agency spent
on training and employment initiatives, which the agency either runs or funds,
in its 2017 fiscal year. By comparison, DEED spent about $116 million each year
on similar activities in 2015 and 2016.
The reason for the increase is no mystery: businesses across
Minnesota have increasingly been in dire need of skilled workers, a gap the
agency has tried to address by funding more than 70 nonprofit organizations across
the state that offer employment support services and career training
programs.
Today, there are more than 98,000 unfilled jobs across all
business sectors in Minnesota, a number that is expected to grow substantially
over the next seven years.
Read
the whole story.
Here’s a map from a just-released report called “Access
Across America”, from the University of Minnesota’s Center for Transportation
Studies. It has a series of heat maps showing the amount of jobs connected to
transit in a huge list of metros around the United States.
Learn
more.
Even with the lowest unemployment in years, many older
workers who lose their jobs are still struggling to line up new ones. The
number of unemployed Americans 55 and over increased in September for the fifth
straight month, nearing 1.2 million, the government reported recently.
Jeremy Hanson Willis, Minnesota’s deputy commissioner of
workforce development, said the problem of older worker unemployment is
puzzling at a time when employers in almost every industry — including
hospitals, factories, trucking and construction firms — are loudly griping
about low unemployment and how difficult it is to find workers. “Part of the
reason we think that employers are having difficulty in filling jobs is because
of implicit bias,” Hanson Willis said. “One of those biases is older workers.
Find helpful tips on interviewing, resumes, self-improvement
and free job search tools and resources at the end of the article.
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