Insights

Sectors after COVID

The pandemic crisis has completely upended the past many years of wisdom and programmatic experience about the role of the workforce system:  in a tight labor market, the workforce system was to be focused on labor force participation – on getting those sitting things out back into the labor force.

After week after week where millions filed for unemployment benefits, the above focus is clearly going to be shifting, fast.

As the ground shifts under our feet, how will we make use of our talents? The opportunity for immediate strategic reframing and action may be in the realm of sector strategies.

Employment as Opioid Recovery Tool

The National Academy for State Health Policy published an interview detailing Kentucky’s implementation of its employment-focused opioid recovery project.

"As chief engagement officer for Kentucky’s Cabinet for Health and Family Services, Kuhn’s job is to help the business community reduce its stigma about opioid addiction and encourage leaders to take a chance on the tens of thousands of Kentuckians who have fallen victim to the state’s devastating opioid tsunami. Employment, and the critical connection to community it engenders, is a critical leg of recovery programs.”

Can Community Colleges Light the Way?

The “future of work” that has been envisioned, debated, and charted has arrived with a bang.  Its arrival was accelerated not by technology as many of us predicted, nor by demographics as some of us expected, but by a virus, fast and deadly.  Now that the future is now, we appear not at all to be ready. 

Our community and technical colleges are institutions, both national in scale and local in access, uniquely positioned to play a leadership role in this critical transformation.  These institutions vary in size, adaptability and resources, but have a real potential to lead the effort to restart and reconstruct the economy.