Transitioning to the New Economy: Individual, Regional and Intermediation Influences on Workforce Retraining Outcomes

Abstract

Goldstein H. A., Lowe N. and Donegan M. Transitioning to the new economy: individual, regional and intermediation influences on workforce retraining outcomes, Regional Studies. The problem of helping workers employed in older manufacturing sectors shift to jobs in growing, high-technology sectors continues to frustrate workforce and economic development officials. An innovative retraining programme in North Carolina has been instituted to train former workers for jobs in pharmaceuticals and biomanufacturing. This study examines what factors best explain whether trainees are successful in receiving job offers after completing their programmes, with a special focus on whether training providers that serve workforce intermediary roles, in addition to their educational role, lead to more successful outcomes for their trainees.

Goldstein H. A., Lowe N. et Donegan M. La nouvelle économie en voie de transition: les influences individuelles, régionales et intermédiaries sur les résultats du recyclage de la main-d'oeuvre, Regional Studies. Le problème de comment aider les travailleurs des secteurs industriels plus anciens à trouver de l'emploi dans les secteurs en pleine croissance, de pointe ne cesse d'agacer les agents du travail et du développement économique. Un programme innovateur de recyclage en Caroline du Nord a été lancé dans le but de former les anciens travailleurs pour des emplois dans la pharmaceutique et les industries biologiques. Cette étude cherche à examiner les facteurs qui expliquent le mieux si, oui ou non, les stagiaires réussissent à trouver de l'emploi en fin de stage, portant principalement sur la capacité des centres de formation, qui constituent des intermédiaires quant à la main-d'oeuvre, de faciliter des résultats plus réussis pour les stagiaires, en sus de leur rôle educatif.

Nouvelle économie Main-d'oeuvre Intermédiaire du travail BioWork Formation

Goldstein H. A., Lowe N. und Donegan M. Übergang in die neue Wirtschaft: individuelle, regionale und vermittelnde Einflüsse auf die Ergebnisse bei der Umschulung von Arbeitnehmern, Regional Studies. Die Probleme bei der Unterstützung von Arbeitnehmern in älteren produzierenden Betrieben beim Wechsel in wachsende Hochtechnologiesektoren sorgen unter der Belegschaft und unter den Beauftragten für Wirtschaftsentwicklung weiterhin für Frustration. In North Carolina wurde ein innovatives Umschulungsprogramm ins Leben gerufen, bei dem ehemalige Arbeitnehmer für Tätigkeiten im Bereich der Pharmazie und Bio-Produktion ausgebildet werden. In dieser Studie wird untersucht, welche Faktoren nach Abschluss des Programms für den Erfolg der Arbeitnehmer hinsichtlich des Erhalts von Stellenangeboten die größte Rolle spielen, wobei besonders auf die Frage eingegangen wird, ob Schulungsanbieter, die nicht nur eine Ausbildungs-, sondern auch eine Arbeitsvermittlungsrolle wahrnehmen, mit für die umgeschulten Arbeitnehmer erfolgreicheren Ergebnissen verbunden sind.

Neue Wirtschaft Arbeitnehmer Arbeitsvermittlung BioWork Berufsausbildung

Goldstein H. A., Lowe N. y Donegan M. La transición a la nueva economía: influencias individuales, regionales e intermediarias en los resultados de la formación de los trabajadores, Regional Studies. El problema de ayudar a los trabajadores empleados en sectores antiguos de manufactura a cambiar a trabajos en sectores de crecimiento y alta tecnología continúa frustrando al personal y a los funcionarios del desarrollo económico. Se ha creado un programa innovador de formación en Carolina del Norte para capacitar a antiguos trabajadores para empleos en laboratorios farmacéuticos y empresas de biomanufactura. En este estudio examinamos qué factores son más importantes para determinar si los trabajadores reciben ofertas de trabajo al finalizar los cursos, y especialmente si los proveedores de los cursos, que además de tener un papel educativo desempeñan un rol de intermediarios con los trabajadores, ayudan a que los trabajadores obtengan mejores resultados.

Nueva economía Mano de obra Intermediarios de la mano de obra BioWork Formación laboral

Keywords:

• New economy
• Workforce
• Workforce intermediary
• BioWork
• Job training

JEL classifications:

• J24
• J68
• O15
• R23

Acknowledgements

This research was partially supported by the North Carolina Biotechnology Center and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Office of Economic and Business Development. Research assistance for the administration of surveys and interviews was provided by a small team of highly skilled students from the Department of City and Regional Planning, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In addition, the authors thank Paul Osterman for his thoughtful and valuable comments and suggestions on an earlier draft of the paper.

Notes

Spatial mismatch theories are often used to explain limited minority access to new jobs (Kain, 1968; Fernandez and Su, 2004). According to this logic, minority job seekers and especially African-Americans are likely to face longer commute times due to segregated residential patterns that do not match up with emergent areas of regional employment growth. As such, they are likely to be less successful with the job search compared with non-minority applicants.

North Carolina lags the United States in the percentage of the population aged twenty-five years or more with a bachelor's degree (22.5% versus 24.4%). But this gap is considerably larger in many of North Carolina's non-metropolitan counties where textiles, furniture, and tobacco production has been concentrated.

The route to getting a job through prior industry experience partially explains why only twenty-eight of the eighty-four completers who applied for jobs received offers.

Most counties have their own community college: there are 100 counties in North Carolina and fifty-eight different community colleges.

Despite the downturn in the macro-economy, many biopharmaceutical companies were facing chronic shortages of specific labour skills. Hence, recruitment support with referrals from the community colleges was highly valued by the employers.

Intermediation functions as they relate only to BioWork, not to other programmes at the college, were examined.

Enrolees who chose not to submit a job application in bioprocessing cited a number of different reasons. The most often-cited were decisions to continue their education in an associate degree programme.

For five of the community colleges, attendance in the Pre-BioWork programme was required to be eligible for enrolment in BioWork if the applicant was not able to pass a test measuring basic verbal and math skills at a 10th-grade level.

The weights are shown in Table A1 in the Appendix. The highest weight is given to First Source and Internship provisions, as these channels establish direct connections between BioWork participants from a specific college and human resources personnel at local biomanufacturers who are involved in hiring decisions. Next in rank are three aspects of college–employer relationships: those entailing frequent communication between BioWork administrators and local biomanufacturing employers and those in which a local biomanufacturing employer donates equipment or volunteers their staff time to the programme. Job placement assistance and human resource development are ranked last on the list. This is not to say that they are unimportant. Rather, most colleges provide these basic services. Furthermore, many colleges face significantly greater difficulty in penetrating the local business community and establishing strong employer connections. This, in turn, limits their ability to function as workforce intermediaries. Because of this existing challenge, greater weight were assigned to all aspects of intermediation support that involve a local biomanufacturing employer.

While many enrolees in the study began their job search in late 2006, firms acknowledged little difference in hiring levels between 2006 and 2007. Therefore, the 2007 job-openings data serve as reasonable estimates of hires across both years.

Airline distances rather than travel distances on the road grid were used; differences in the results were very slight.

In lieu of being able to use multilevel modelling, the individual observations were clustered by their community colleges and robust standard errors were used that remove the assumption that observations within community colleges are fully independent of one another.