“We Have the Site, But We Need the Workforce!”

by Chris Manheim, President, McHenry County Economic Development Corporation

How often have you heard that phrase from a site selector or owner-operator seeking a new location or preparing to expand? If you are a local or regional economic developer in the field, the answer is probably “many times.”More often than not, that question is posed before the prospect even asks about buildings or sites.

That’s why it’s important to have a thorough understanding about local economic trends and your existing and emerging labor supply, and to be able to convey this information quickly and easily to site selectors or expanding businesses.

Fortunately, finding this information does not require an expensive consultant study. There are many tools available to the local economic developer at little or no cost, although they may require collaboration and partnerships. Some of the tools that we commonly use in Illinois may already be in your toolkit and some may not, but all are readily available.

Answering questions from site selectors

As you most likely know, good site selectors probably know as much about your region and county as you do, from readily available government and commercial data. That includes the characteristics of the available workforce. By the time your agency is contacted about a project, chances are your community is on the short list; every other candidate has been eliminated. The reason you are now getting the call is because that consultant requires the next level of local information and to confirm regional information.

For example, the site selector is more or less sure about the major employers in the region. The consultant’s call may be simply to confirm the 20 largest employers. In many cases, simply knowing these companies, plus the demographic profile of the search radius, will tell the consultant all that is necessary to make a recommendation to the client.

As part of due diligence, though, the site selector may send you one of those lengthy and infamous questionnaires. These questionnaires may appear a bit sadistic, but there are good reasons for their existence. First, the consultant is trying to collect local data, but in a very standardized format. Second, the consultant is looking for the community to present reasons why it should remain in the running for a project. Frequently, available workforce and training are keys to winning a project. Here are a couple of examples of the kind of information the site selector may be seeking. Figure 1, below, was developed from the typical Labor Management Information (LMI) data that can be obtained from state and federal labor department Web sites. These data were compiled from sections of one of the Illinois Department of Employment Security’s Web sites called “Where Workers Work” (lmi.ides.state.il.us/wwwork.htm). Having this type of information on hand – preferably in a section of your Web site – for various key industries helps illustrate the current status of your local employment picture. Figure I shows that in McHenry County, while the number of manufacturers has declined since 2002, the number of employees has actually risen. (Keep in mind, though, that these data are usually based on workers’ compensation coverage, and therefore exclude many small businesses that don’t participate in the system. Thus, a major part of the local economy is not represented.)

» Page 2 of 2