workforce

The report from the Progressive Policy Institute discusses the new labor market and work systems and identifies eight principles that all levels of government, particularly the states, should follow in designing a workforce development system for the New Economy.

The objective of the paper is to identify major potential barriers to employers increased use of telecommuting. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) looked into perceived and potential obstacles to telecommuting. For companies, the GAO found significant barriers involve internal management concerns for the employer.

The report released by Carnegie Mellon examines brain drain in Pennsylvania finding that growing regions are both importers and exporters of talent, but they tend to import more than they export. The report also indicates that the state does offer competitive incentives for attracting and retaining graduates and workers.

The Department of Labor has issued on its website Telework and the New Workplace of the 21st Century, a compilation of a dozen studies presented at a national telework symposium held in New Orleans in October.

The report from the Institute on Education and the Economy at Columbia University indicates early results of the 1994 School-to-Work Opportunities Act are encouraging, but there are areas for improvement given the opportunity presented by reauthorization. The study also found School-to-Work student participants are less likely to drop out of school than non-participants, school attendance and grades improve, and many broaden their career options by going on for post-secondary education.

The University of Georgia study showed the HOPE scholarship program has been influential in keeping the states brightest high school students in-state for college – a significant goal based on the Southern Technology Council findings regarding the likelihood of students remaining in-state after school. Based on this report, policy makers may want to focus first and foremost on keeping high school students in state for college, and working hard to attract bright students in science and engineering who attended high school outside the state.

The report from the Southern Technology Council (STC) provides one of the first in-depth looks at what factors influence graduate migration behavior after college. Putting emphasis is on recent science and engineering graduates, STC identifies several individual, institutional, and state-level predictors of student retention using a series of regression analyses of 44 different variables.

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The Brookings Institutions Center on Urban & Metropolitan Policy report finds that a leading indicator of a metropolitan areas high technology success is a large gay population. Using four indices, 1990 census data, and the Milken Institute’s measures of high-tech concentration, the new analysis revealed other indications of diversity, such as a high concentration of artists or foreign-born residents, are additional significant indicators of successful technology centers.

The report notes several reasons to advance women in the sciences, including the economic imperative to increase the technological and scientific literacy of Americas workforce. At a time when U.S. industry cannot fill openings for technically advanced jobs, the talents of women are underutilized, reports the National Council for Research on Women.

The report states that brain drain and a lack of technically skilled workers, both scientists and engineers, are common complaints of state and local tech-based economic development practitioners across the country. The author contends government must increase the quantity of scientists and engineers, not simply the cost of the existing pool of available researchers.