Where Are the Workers?
News headlines underscore a growing crisis among businesses: A severe shortage of talent for current and future positions.
The Where are the Workers analysis is being led by Fund for Our Economic Future, Team NEO, ConxusNEO, PolicyBridge, with funding support from The Kresge Foundation, Deaconess Foundation and the Summit & Medina Workforce Area Council of Governments. Together, we are working to understand the question on everyone’s mind: Where are the workers?
Join us in this important conversation. Subscribe for ongoing updates and invitations to participate in this important research, and read below what we’ve published so far.
Featured Story
Will people rejoin the workforce? How many workers will quit this year? Survey of 5,000 Northeast Ohioans offers clues
on 20 May 2022
CLEVELAND, Ohio — Despite the all the turnover during the “Great Resignation,” 1-in-5 workers in the Northeast Ohio are still thinking of quitting in the next year.
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Research Updates
Employers, workforce agencies, policymakers, and others needed answers yesterday, so we won’t be waiting for the ink to dry on the final report to share key insights and answer questions. Read on for updates on the work as it progresses.
Where Are the Workers?
“No other resource provides such a deep, first-hand perspective of real workers."
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on 01 July 2022
Replay: Webinar on Working-Age Adult Survey Data
On June 8, we hosted a public webinar showcasing the latest insights from our working-age adult survey and sharing what's next for this work. Watch the replay and access slides from the presentation here.
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on 08 June 2022
Fund seeks quotes for data dashboards for Where Are the Workers
The Fund for Our Economic Future invites data visualization and design firms or
consultants to submit a quote for a user-friendly, interactive dashboard by June 20, 2022.
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on 03 June 2022
Courting Talent: Empathy as a Competitive Advantage
The data emerging from this survey offer an unprecedented look into the hearts and minds of Northeast Ohio’s workforce, with statistically significant insights into residents of 11 counties that we can examine through nearly endless permutations of demographics, geography and industry.
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on 20 May 2022
Data and research drive Where are the Workers, efforts to create an equitable economy
By Jacob Duritsky, Vice President, Strategy and Research – TeamNEO Talent is critical to the success of any region, and in this post-pandemic economy, this has
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on 10 May 2022
Work Culture Clash
...in the employer roundtables happening around the region as part of our analysis, much of what we’re hearing from participating employers is focused on figuring out what’s wrong with today’s workers—and not so much about what might be wrong with today’s work.
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More resources, yes. But what public transit agencies really need are more flexible resources.
In short, we need more resources—and those resources must be flexible enough to enable necessary adaptation—to meet employment needs in today’s world.
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What’s Behind Workers’ Decisions? We’re Asking Them.
...to understand why people quit, why they stay, what keeps them from working if they want or need to, and how their perceptions and values around work have evolved through the seismic societal shifts we’ve all experienced over the last several years.
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An equitable recovery: Moving beyond a return to status quo
Black women are returning to the labor force. But is this a good thing? Well, it depends on why they are returning.
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New survey reveals what employers are (or aren’t) doing to mitigate talent challenges
You know the saying, “people don’t quit their jobs, they quit their managers?” Forget it. People are quitting their jobs.
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How a Shifting Financial Position May Be Impacting Worker Choices
Improved financial position may have enabled a significant number of workers to step onto the sideline—but that party may be ending soon.
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Take Our Regional Employer Survey
Now through January 10, we’re joining partners across the region to ask businesses to participate in our Regional Employer Survey. If you are a business owner, hiring manager, human resources professional or other leader tasked with finding and retaining talent in Northeast Ohio, we want to hear from you.
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Anecdotes and Evidence—A National Scan of Worker Shortage Analyses
This post takes stock of what national data and analyses can—or can’t—explain relative to the current state of the Northeast Ohio labor market. The chart below summarizes what we learned after exploring three questions:
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Where Are the Workers?
The Fund for Our Economic Future, Team NEO, and ConxusNEO and PolicyBridge have embarked on a multi-part analysis to better understand what’s happening in our region and answer the question on everyone’s mind: Where are the workers?
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Media Coverage
Why Did 400,000+ Quit Jobs in Region? It’s Complicated, Study Finds
While there are many anecdotal answers, Bethia Burke, president of Fund for Our Economic Future, says her organization went looking for the real reasons here in northeastern Ohio.
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on 25 July 2022
The value of people, the power of place
Paying attention to what workers say matters. Even with concerns about a coming recession, talent shortages persist.
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on 25 July 2022
A new survey asks: Where are the workers and what do they want?
"What we're seeing in the results is that there is a sizable number of people who have shifted their perspective about what matters, and it is showing up in the choices they are making," she said.
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on 15 July 2022
Manufacturers Can’t Find Workers. Where’d They Go?
Contributed by Ethan Karp to Forbes Manufacturers are not alone in wondering what has happened to the shrinking base of American workers over the last two
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on 01 July 2022
Where Are the Workers? Project launches website with new data and insights for Northeast Ohio
CLEVELAND, Ohio — Where Are the Workers?, a multiphase project delving into the labor shortage in Northeast Ohio, has created a new website to share its findings.
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on 01 July 2022
Wean Foundation Board of Directors Meets at Amphitheater
Bethia Burke, president of the Cleveland-based Fund for Our Economic Future, was the guest speaker at the meeting. She shared insights from her fund’s “Where are the Workers” analysis.
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on 17 June 2022
Where are the workers in Greater Akron? ‘Right under your nose,’ chamber president says
The work initially focused on Summit, Medina and Portage counties, partly funded by the Summit and Medina Workforce Area, but it eventually expanded into a broader regional 11-county research project, led by the Fund for Our Economic Future.
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on 17 June 2022
Survey reveals reasons behind labor shortage in Portage area
...workers want employers to include salary information in their job listings, freelance and contract work is a growing part of the job landscape, that COVID-19 has had a big impact on people looking for work, there are mixed feelings about vaccine mandates in the workplace, and workers have a high interest in job training and education.
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on 05 June 2022
The Changing Reality of Human Resource Management
Fund President Bethia Burke moderated a panel of human resources leaders who discussed the role's evolution in the wake of recent workforce changes.
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on 03 June 2022
We finally know what happened to all those Cleveland workers in the Great Resignation: Today in Ohio
And this was a survey of nearly 5,000 working adults across 11 counties in Northeast Ohio. And basically it shows that the great resignation is far from over.
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on 20 May 2022
Will people rejoin the workforce? How many workers will quit this year? Survey of 5,000 Northeast Ohioans offers clues
CLEVELAND, Ohio — Despite the all the turnover during the “Great Resignation,” 1-in-5 workers in the Northeast Ohio are still thinking of quitting in the next year.
Read more
on 20 May 2022
Greater Cleveland Career Consortium aims to connect students to careers and solve talent gap
Thanks to the Great Resignation, caused in part by the pandemic, many employers are facing a talent shortage, with a new survey from the Fund for our Economic Future finding that four of five companies surveyed in Northeast Ohio say they have been increasing pay
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on 09 May 2022
Virtual Roundtables Ask ‘Where Are the Workers?’
“Our goal is to create an environment for candid conversations that produce actionable insights for employers and practitioners in Northeast Ohio and beyond,” said Bethia Burke, president of the Fund for Our Economic Future.
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Improved literacy and numbers skills will create a larger pool of qualified workers: Laureen Atkins
When further asked about the biggest workforce-related challenges, 85% cited recruitment, with more than half again mentioning the lack of qualified candidates.
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New workforce survey highlights issues and solutions for employers during ongoing labor shortage
Early results, which focus on the labor shortage from the perspective of employers, confirm the job market remains a “workers market,” with workers in demand and employers still struggling to hire.
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A Columbus-area call center hiring Cleveland-based workers? Discover expands hiring search for remote work
Only 15.7% of employers said they were offering work-from-home options or flexible working hours as their strategy to keep workers.
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The Great Resignation, while hard on businesses, is putting workers in a position of power
On the other hand, Burke says the demand for workers is giving employees an increased ability to seek better pay or launch new careers.
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Where Are the Workers? New data shows just how many employers are upping pay to attract and keep employees
By Sean McDonnell, cleveland.com CLEVELAND, Ohio — A new survey of Northeast Ohio’s employers confirms that it’s a workers’ market, and many companies are upping their pay
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Where are all the workers? Employers finding higher wages alone not enough to lure people
Doug Livingston Akron Beacon Journal If preliminary data for November hold true, Summit and Portage counties have never had this few unemployed workers in 25 years of recordkeeping at the Bureau of
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A survey of Northeast Ohio employers and workers aims to shed light on hiring struggles
The “Where Are the Workers?” survey will seek insights from employers and working-age adults in two phases.
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Sara McCarthy
Sara McCarthy is the Fund's Director of Communications.
Published
November 30, 2021
