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Consider the paper ceiling—when not having a bachelor’s degree prevents skilled workers from accessing jobs in a labor market that needs them. Between 2012 and 2019, 69% of new jobs in the U.S. required a bachelor’s degree, excluding 70 million workers from a significant portion of the job market. This phenomenon reflects the nation’s overreliance on college degrees as an indicator of job readiness. Businesses must shift their emphasis from requiring a bachelor’s degree to possessing key skills, and entrepreneurship education teaches these crucial skills. This shift requires the participation and support of economic developers.

IEDC's Accredited Economic Development Organization (AEDO) program recognizes organizational excellence in the areas of internal and external operations, structures, and procedures. This series profiles recently accredited AEDOs, putting some of economic development's highest-performing organizations in the spotlight. This edition: Elgin (Ill.) Development Group.

IEDC is accepting submissions through May 30 for the 2023 Excellence and Leadership in Economic Development Awards. Norfolk (Va.) Economic Development’s WELDNOW Mobile Welding Lab won a Gold Award in 2022 in the Talent Development and Retention category. The WELDNOW mobile welding lab program is a collaboration between Tidewater Community College, Norfolk Economic Development’s workforce initiative Norfolk Works, and inaugural host site Lyon Shipyard, a 94-year-old ship repair facility adjacent to the region’s largest concentration of households in poverty. This comprehensive training initiative prepares individuals for employment in shipbuilding and advanced manufacturing with an emphasis on work readiness and ...

IEDC is accepting submissions through May 30 for the 2023 Excellence and Leadership in Economic Development Awards. The Excellence and Leadership in Economic Development Awards recognize the world’s best economic development programs, partnerships, and marketing materials, and the year’s most influential economic development leaders. These prestigious awards honor organizations and individuals for their efforts in creating positive change in urban, suburban, and rural communities. Receiving an award showcases your achievements and impact in the field, and winners are recognized at IEDC's Annual Conference. Please email [email protected] with any questions. Battle Creek (Mich.) Unlimited’s DoubleTree Hotel Renovation ...

IEDC's Accredited Economic Development Organization (AEDO) program recognizes organizational excellence in the areas of internal and external operations, structures, and procedures. This series profiles recently accredited AEDOs, putting some of economic development's highest-performing organizations in the spotlight. This edition: Avondale (Ariz.) EDGE.

Communities, developers, and real estate asset managers will continue to need to reimagine and reinvent shopping malls into mixed-use redevelopments. The availability of large amounts of land, building space, parking capacity, and typically superior access to roadway connections, provides the physical resources to transform malls from predominantly single-use spaces to a dramatically more varied mix of uses.

IEDC’s 2023 Leadership Summit will be held next week in Tucson, Arizona. A few of our conference speakers and sponsors shared some exciting economic development projects happening in the region.

The City of Tucson Office of Economic Initiatives launched a free workforce development program in 2022 to address the skill gap in the industrial sewing trades. The program, named AZ Stitch Lab, is offered by a partnership between the City of Tucson, the Pascua Yaqui Tribe, Moonshot, and Sonoran Stitch Factory. Erica Yngve, president and CEO of Tucson-based Sonoran Stitch Factory, was working to meet the needs of commercial clients from around the world wanting to produce materials made in the U.S. With business growing Yngve needed more workers to meet the demand, but at the time there were only 1,770 sewing machine operators in all of Arizona. Sonoran Stitch Factory happens to sit in the heart of a neighborhood that was already a ...