San Diego Workforce Funders Collaborative

The founding members of the San Diego Workforce Funders Collaborative began meeting in August 2006. SDWFC is a dynamic coalition working to identify the region’s workforce needs, create well-coordinated and well-financed solutions that support systemic change, and evaluate regional success. The SDWFC will both expand the number of individuals receiving services through its funding efforts and serve as a catalyst to support broader capacity building within San Diego’s education system and workforce provider communities.

Funding Collaborative

San Diego is home to an array of leading service, innovation, and knowledge-based industries. Its regional strength is based on its ability to maintain a vibrant and competitive regional economy. To address local challenges, foundations, businesses, community-based organizations, and workforce development leaders from throughout the region came together to form SDWFC. The current SDWFC members are: The California Endowment, San Diego Workforce Partnership, State of California Employment Development Department, San Diego Grantmakers, Alliance Healthcare Foundation, Invitrogen Corporation, WebMD Health Foundation, The Girard Foundation, and Kaiser Permanente.

San Diego has a strong, publicly funded workforce system that manages a series of successful programs and services. It is also home to numerous foundations and businesses that dedicate time, money, and resources to various workforce sectors. The SDWFC coordinates and leverages these organizations’ efforts and available resources to provide funding to address San Diego’s most pressing workforce challenges. In addition, the SDWFC focuses on the strategic alignment of resources, including the use of research and policy analysis to create true systemic change.

SDWFC focuses its attention on four growing industry clusters: 

• Health care. Requirements for allied health jobs range from standard certifications to advanced degrees. These positions can offer low-wage workers meaningful access to career ladders and advancement, livable wages, and health care benefits.

• Biotechnology/life sciences. San Diego has a significant and growing biotechnology/life sciences industry that could serve as a source of high-paying jobs for the region. The San Diego region is the world’s third-largest biotechnology center.

• High technology. San Diego’s high-technology industries could serve as a source of high-paying jobs for the region’s residents. Employment in the communications, computer and electronics manufacturing, software and computer services, and defense and transportation manufacturing industries are projected to add close to 20,000 new jobs between 2000 and 2020.

• Construction, engineering, and technical occupations. In all aspects of construction, manufacturing, and technical jobs, entry-level positions are available for those with lower skills and lower education levels. As individuals move into these positions, they will be provided with opportunities to earn a livable wage, receive benefits, and take advantage of long-term training and apprenticeship-style programs.

Key Strategies and Interventions

With an emphasis on programs that focus on math- and science-related careers in the four targeted industry sectors and occupational clusters, the SDWFC will help youth and adults in San Diego receive and maintain the knowledge needed to navigate the modern economic climate. By targeting individuals who are unemployed and underemployed and linking them to education and training programs designed to support the region’s growing base of high-wage, high-demand jobs, the SDWFC will have a significant impact on hundreds of local workers, families, and businesses.

Labor Market Analysis

The following powerpoint provides an analysis of the San Diego regional labor market.  The analysis is intended to provide a picture into overall employment conditions and structural changes in this local economy, focusing on the period from 2001-2007.  Though this data does not capture changes associated with the  recent 2008 recession, it should still provide useful insights into medium-term demographic and employment changes.

The data analyzed here comes from two major sources:  The American Community Survey 2007 (and 1990 & 2000 Decennial Census for some charts) from the U.S. Census Bureau; and the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

For a full guide to the data content, structure, and how it might be used, please listen to the June 16, 2009, recorded webinar available here.

San_Diego_Data.zip

San_Diego_Region.ppt