No abstract

Economic development scholars and practitioners increasingly recognise the importance of both industry and occupational composition as sources of regional strength and specialisation. At the same time, occupational cluster analysis has paid insufficient attention to a main potential constituency of economic development: people in or near poverty. This article addresses this gap by developing 25 occupation clusters using a wide range of attributes, including skills and work styles, available from US Occupational Information Network (O*NET) data. The resulting clusters include many lower-wage occupations and illustrate possible career paths within clusters and across industries, based on similar interests and abilities, among other factors. These occupation clusters can be used to define the labour pools in US regions. Two of these clusters are used to demonstrate the concept that economic development centred on existing labour assets in a particular city or region may lead to stronger growth as well as reduced poverty.

A widely used practice in state and local economic and workforce development is to identify and explicitly invest in strategic industry clusters. Economic theory suggests that industry clusters, defined as geographically concentrated groups of firms and supporting institutions in related industries, enhance industry productivity and regional prosperity, relative to nonclustered industries. This concept, although widely used, has been insufficiently evaluated. In particular, questions remain about the extent to which cluster strategies are associated with beneficial outcomes for employees in clustered industries. Using a population-wide panel of individual-level quarterly wage and industry data covering the period 2003-2010 for the state of Washington, this research measures the association of industry cluster membership with the employment status, wage levels, and wage growth rates of individual employees in counties in the state. The mixed results carry implications for strategic investments and job creation efforts by states and local governments across the United States.

This research measures earnings progression among participants in federally funded Workforce Investment Act (WIA) programs in the state of Washington during the period 2001 through 2008, using state administrative data and propensity score-weighted regressions. Unlike previous evaluations that have emphasized earnings levels, this study addresses both earnings progression and levels to assess whether workers are on a path to reaching economic self-sufficiency within a short time after participation. The analysis finds that participants in WIA Adult services had similar earnings progression as people receiving only less-intensive Labor Exchange services.

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in