Facing troubling workforce demographic trends, regional leaders have launched Northern Kentucky Works — the region’s new workforce development office.
With baby boomers aging into retirement and an unprecedented number of job openings across Northern Kentucky and the United States, attracting and retaining talent has become a central component of economic strategy for regional leaders.
Janet Harrah, chief economist at Northern Kentucky University’s Center for Economic Analysis and Development, told LINK nky in February that there aren’t enough millennials and Gen Z workers available to fill the void left by the baby boomers.
“The native-born people are not having enough kids to replace themselves,” Campbell County Judge/Executive Steve Pendery said during the NKY Works launch at CVG on Thursday morning. “Workforce is actually expected to shrink in many countries and the conventional reaction to workforce or just like trying to lure people off the sidelines just won’t work because the people that we need were never born.”
Moreover, a U.S. Chamber of Commerce report published that same month found there are 9.5 million open jobs in the U.S. but only 6.5 million unemployed workers.
“There will simply not be enough people to fill jobs for the foreseeable future in the United States,” Pendery said.
The answer for public and private leaders in Northern Kentucky landed on is to double down on their commitment to workforce development. To that end, the region would need a dedicated office to focus specifically on workforce development policy and strategies. Enter NKY Works.
NKY Works is replacing GROW NKY as the region’s primary workforce development office. The office’s responsibilities include developing and overseeing workforce policy and initiatives in Northern Kentucky while partnering with the region’s employers, educational institutions, and other agencies to implement strategies that address workforce challenges.
The office was first conceived in the fall of last year when the Northern Kentucky University Center for Economic Analysis and Development completed the GROW NKY Workforce Governance Study – a comprehensive assessment of the region’s workforce investment ecosystem.
The study identified the most effective governance system for the region’s workforce development ecosystem, which is a model similar to the Northern Kentucky Office of Drug Control Policy. The agency was created in 2015 to assist in the development of substance use policy initiatives and to provide advisory services to the fiscal courts of Boone, Campbell and Kenton counties.
With that in mind, regional leaders started to craft what would become NKY Works.
“The only thing that is going to impede continued success in Northern Kentucky, the only that is going to impede continued success at CVG is lack of workforce,” CVG CEO Candace McGraw said. “We have the know-how, we have the ability, we have the will, now we just have to figure out how to grow that pipeline.”
Since March, the fiscal courts of Boone, Kenton and Campbell counties, in addition to the Northern Kentucky Area Development District, signed onto a Memorandum of Agreement publicly backing NKY Works.
Correy Eimer, associate director of workforce development at the Northern Kentucky Area Development District, said NKY Works features five pillars for success: early childhood education, career readiness, work-ready adults, talent attraction and retention and employer policies and practices.
“The work done through GROW’s pillars is not coming to an end,” Eimer said. “Northern Kentucky Works is the next iteration of GROW. The five pillars will continue. What is changing is our emphasis on the private sector.”
Eimer went on to say that NKY Works is striving to create a cohesive, well-coordinated network of services.
In the coming months, NKY Works will unveil the office’s official website and host its first event in the fall. The office already has an established phone number.
