The Skills 2006 Outlook

To best leverage the Grow Iowa Values Fund’s investment in Iowa’s 15 community colleges, each college conducted a study of their region of the state to examine the labor market needs for future workers and the desired skill sets needed by these workers.

The Skills 2006 Outlook is a research study that seeks to quantify and evaluate the employment and training needs for the next three years in the areas of advanced manufacturing, information technology and insurance, and life sciences which include the areas of biotechnology, health care technology, and nursing care technology.

The results of this study will give us a better picture of employment trends and employee training needs for success in our high performance, technology-driven workplaces. It will also provide objective data to public policy debates on the types of workers and education programs needed to meet the growth projections, changes in employment, demographics and technology needs of companies over the next three to five years.