The Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, which strives to ensure the health of our monetary system while also managing inflation and seeking full employment, has a Community Development function supporting the Fourth District geography . This function serves a critical role for businesses and residents of our community, as it captures and provides objective data, analysis, and related tools to help achieve the Federal Reserve’s overall goals. I’m sure many of you know members of the Federal Reserve team, because they are active and involved in our community, serving on committees, attending meetings, and sharing their tools and research.
One of the most exciting tools for the workforce ecosystem the Cleveland Fed has developed is its Occupational Mobility Explorer (OME), and I’ve recently had two chances to hear Dr. Kyle Fee, policy advisor from the Community Development group, explain how it is used.
The interactive OME tool exists to connect career opportunities based on shared skills. Two of the use cases I’m most excited about are as follows:
- A person (student, job seeker, etc.) can input the geographic area in which she lives and her current job, and can see what the next occupation could be on her career path. These “next” occupations are based on leveraging her existing skills but also identify what additional skills would be helpful. For each occupation, the local median wage is identified as well as the growth rate for the occupation and whether a bachelor’s degree is required or not.
This tool is excellent for helping individuals understand how they can grow their career, giving them data to help make a good decision, and providing information about what additional education would be needed. It allows people to build a career path based on their interests but also informed by local market economic data.
- An employer seeking to fill a job can input a current role /occupation, and identify 10 of the occupations which have many of the same skills as the current role/occupation. This can help with recruiting to fill the role by 1) identifying industry targets which might not be already obvious, based on occupations which have the same skills, or 2) identifying internal areas of a larger company where the people and occupations have the same skills, and giving direction on where internal training funds could be used to help upskill an incumbent worker into the occupation. Both of these make recruiting and filling open roles easier, although I am biased in wanting opportunities to be provided to current employees who can be upskilled into better, higher paying work!
Check out the tool and other research reports and data from the Community Development group at of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. We are lucky to have them working on our behalf.