If you live in California and are thinking about jobs, where you live probably heavily influences your outlook.
For instance, in places like the Silicon Valley, Orange County and San Diego, the job picture is actually pretty good.
But in other areas of the state, especially those that are inland, things are not so rosy. In fact, in some of the areas, things are actually pretty difficult. This Wall Street Journal story last week captured the uneven regional economic profile of the state.
The recent California Economic Summit was developed around understanding the regions of the state. The Summit utilized a region-by-region process in order to develop its seven signature initiatives designed to improve job creation in California and improve the state’s ability to compete in today’s global markets.
One of those initiatives is Workforce Development. California’s workforce is not efficiently aligned with the job opportunities in the state. As a result, while the state struggles with an unemployment rate at 10.7 percent, we also know that thousands of jobs are going unfilled because workers are not trained to fill them.
But if the California Workforce Association (CWA) has its way, that won’t be a problem forever. CWA is hosting its 2012 Meeting of the Minds Conference in Monterey, CA on September 4-6. Regional workforce, economic development and educational leaders are all expected to attend.
“The 2012 MMM Conference provides a forum for training, tools and collaboration, as we examine how we can enhance our ‘collective impact’, as well as build on critical statewide initiatives aimed at growing California’s economy,” said CWA Executive Director, Barbara Halsey. “Specifically, we’ll examine how to advance the Smart Workforce Initiative from the 2012 California Economic Summit.”
The Smart Workforce Initiative prioritizes and aligns existing workforce training and career education resources to focus on workforce issues facing California’s major regional industry sectors. The MMM Conference provides a venue for regional action teams in workforce, economic development, education, business and industry to work together to identify or refine workforce development initiatives that support California’s major regional industry sectors.
If you want to register for the event, you can do so online.
