Rick Farrant, director of communications for Northeast Indiana Works, has been invited to speak at a U.S. Census Bureau virtual workshop focusing on “Making Sense of Data in a New Era.”
The three-day Local Employment Dynamics (LED) Partnership event (April 5-7) will largely focus on the bureau’s Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics (LEHD) data but will also broadly explore labor market information.
The keynote speaker will be David Card, professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley, and the co-recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2021.
Farrant will speak on “Mining the Data Gold Mine” and shed light on how workforce development organizations and other organizations can use data to inform key stakeholders, help drive local and regional strategies, and enhance an organization’s brand.
Northeast Indiana Works has worked closely with Indiana Department of Workforce Development analysts in compiling and disseminating data derived from the Census Bureau and other sources.
Northeast Indiana Works used LEHD data to report that a growing number of women are entering northeast Indiana’s manufacturing and construction workforces. Another LEHD-resourced report released by Northeast Indiana Works indicated young people in northeast Indiana tend to be employed in lower-paying industries.
“We are exposed to an ever-increasing volume and array of workforce and economic data,” said Keith A. Bailey, the Census Bureau’s assistant center chief for Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics Research. “It is imperative that we understand what we can about the origins and constructs of any data in an effort to effectively utilize the information.
“The data made possible from the Local Employment Dynamics Partnership arguably represents the most comprehensive information on workforce demographics and employer characteristics,” Bailey said. “The LED annual workshop brings together data partners, researchers, policymakers, and others to share and discuss the Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics data and its varied uses in understanding the workforce and its utility in data-driven decision making.”
Said Northeast Indiana Works President and CEO Edmond O’Neal: “We are excited to share our data application experiences with a national audience. For quite a few years, we have viewed labor market information, especially customized data, as essential to employer engagement and regional strategies covering a broad range of workforce- and economic development-related initiatives.”