Connecting Skills To Opportunities
August 30, 2021
The State of Nevada is on top of things. For close to 10 years, they’ve been focused on where industry is going and what it means for the future of work in the state. State leaders like Bob Potts, deputy director at the Governor’s Office of Economic Development (GOED) have recognized its legacy industries (gaming, entertainment, and tourism) have been on a maturing path for decades. They’ve thus been working to identify the state’s comparative advantages in various industries to better diversify.
“We looked at advanced manufacturing, technology, healthcare, logistics and operations, and energy,” Potts said. “We were doing reverse staffing patterns for those sectors, looking at their workforce, seeing what our inventory was, where our gaps were compared to the national average. We looked at location quotient, STEM occupations, real-time data — all that.”
Potts and his team at GOED use this labor market knowledge to provide guidance, education, and workforce support across the state.