Abstract
WP-659
The Uses of Labor Market Information in Defense Conversion and Economic Development: An Exploration of New Roles for Higher Education
February 1996 / 13 pp.- Victor Rubin
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Since many of the critical policy and planning issues facing metropolitan areas concern the number and nature of jobs, it is hardly surprising that there are continual calls for more and better information about local and regional labor markets. When familiar patterns of economic growth, decline, and change in an urban area are overshadowed by a new and immediate crisis, the demand for innovative, useful labor market infoirmation grows even stronger. This was the case in the San Francisco Bay Area over the last two years, as the imminent closure of almost all of the region's numerous Navy bases became a reality. In all, more than 51,000 direct and indirect jobs were projected to be lost, with an annual economic impact of $1 billion. In this paper, we focus on one small but significant part of the conversion process: the roles of institutions of higher education in analyzing and responding to labor and training needs. Our examination of the issues of labor and training includes two parts.
First, we present a brief case study of the efforts by Bay Area universities to address the labor and training needs of the growing sector of environmental industries, considered so basic to the conversion process and the success of the overall economy. Then we explore the efforts to improve the labor market information system and the particular strategies and constraints to using this information faced by the three sectors of California public higher education. This is not a report about a finished project, nor is the subject neatly defined by a specific data base or limited set of actors. Rather it is a report of work in progress and, indeed, of some work that was proposed but never undertaken. It is a preliminary study of changing institutional roles amid a particularly unruly planning process. We hope that it can be useful to other university-based researchers who are contemplating similar activities, and to those who would work with them.
