Growing and Retaining a Workforce

Jim Golembeski, Envision Board member and Upward Mobility Signals Team

It takes 18 years to grow a worker.

That makes workforce forecasting one of the easiest things that Envision can do in our efforts to identify trends and challenges.  It is easy to gather live birth data for our region on an annual basis and extrapolate out into the future.

We know the numbers of each age group, year by year, in NEW North.  I have been speaking about these numbers for more than twenty years. The writing, as in the book of Daniel, has been on the wall: too many Baby Boomers retiring and not enough replacement workers coming into our workforce.

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“Hollowing Out The State”

Heidi Selberg, Envision Board Member and Upward Mobility Signals Team

Our team’s previous reports have shown the importance of public policy in supporting upward mobility.  Judy Nagel’s reports have outlined international comparisons, demonstrating that several government policies related to childcare, health, and other matters are critical to those countries’ higher rates of upward mobility. But what if upward mobility in the U.S. is not accelerating because our institutions are becoming weaker?

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Where Upward Mobility Begins

Judy Nagel, Envision Board member and Upward Mobility Signals Team

Here in the nation with more gun violence than any other on earth, Americans constantly ask about the root cause of gun violence. The answer is “mental health.” So how are we doing with that? The CDC identifies early childhood as the period in which mental health is largely determined, starting shortly after birth (with some influence by prenatal conditions).

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