Local Skills Shortage Assessment Report Skills Summary Report   |  Formal Research/Reports County Specific Data   |  Educational Data   |  Summary

Local Skills Shortage Assessment Report
August 3, 2001

The Cattaraugus-Allegany Workforce Investment Board, Inc. was awarded a $25,000 grant by the NYS Department of Labor to conduct a local assessment of skills shortages in our area workforce. The goal of the project is to engage local board members in identifying the workforce needs of the local industry and jobseekers and to use the information gathered to develop a strategic plan that sets forth policies to address those needs in an ongoing and systematic fashion. By accepting these funds, the WIB committed itself to carrying out the following activities:

• Conducting a scan of available information on the local labor market and identifying information gaps.
• Devising and implementing a strategy to fill the identified information gaps.
• Reaching out to local businesses to identify their occupational and skills needs.
• Establishing and implementing a method to continuously collect skills needs requests from local businesses.
• Developing a strategic plan that addresses the issues raised by the nine policy questions identified in the Request For Applications based upon the information gathered as a result of the community scan and local business outreach.
• Participating in a Statewide Training Requests Database by providing local skills request information to the Department.

In completing Phase I of this grant project, the focus was on the following three main objectives 1) to gain an understanding of the available sources of data, 2) to gather data specific to Allegany and Cattaraugus Counties, and 3) to present the materials in a useable format to assist the WIB in decision-making. Consideration should be given to the fact that WIB staff conducted this research informally and not a great deal of available data was appropriate to our purposes. The following sources provided materials.

1. Southern Tier West (STW)
2. New York State Department of Labor (NYSDOL)
3. United States Census Bureau
4. United States Bureau of Economic Analysis (USBEA)
5. New York State Education Department (NYSED)
6. Jamestown Community College (JCC)
7. Cattaraugus County Area Office for the Aging
8. Workforce Investment Subcommittee
9. Olean Chamber of Commerce
10. Cattaraugus County Business Development Corporation
11. Walker Business & Staffing

Materials gathered from these sources were reviewed to determine those that provided data relevant to our purpose. Those materials were then placed in the following three categories.

• Formal Research/Reports
• County Specific Data
• Educational Data Related to Workforce Advancement

Workforce Investment Board
One Blue Bird Square
Lower Level
Olean, NY 14760
716-806-0060
mailbox@cawib.net