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Corridor & IWD Conducting Laborshed Study

December 16, 2024 Steve Schwaller

(Spencer)– A study of the region’s laborshed is about to get underway. Curt Strouth, Executive Director of the Iowa Lakes Corridor Development Corporation, says the study is done every four years as a joint effort with Iowa Workforce Development…

“Laborsheds are important because essentially what they do is they measure the availability and the characteristics of our workers right here in the Corridor region. They’re useful tools for us as economic development organizations and cities and counties. They also show our respective employers, give us a better understanding of the local labor market which helps them make informed decisions on, for example, expansions or sight selection decisions, and more importantly, maintaining and recruiting a high quality workforce.”

Strouth says the survey is conducted randomly…

“There will be some randomly selected households. They’ll be asking residents to take a confidential online survey. Questions that will be asked will be just simple ones such as employment status, their current or desired wages, current and desired benefits, their education level, and type of occupation among a few other things. It’s not going to ask anybody any of their personal information such as social security number and date of birth, their name, they’re not going to be calculating that info. It’s just the information that I mentioned before. And we’re just encouraging people that their participation is greatly appreciated because all this information here gathered at a local level helps us to make good decisions both on a state site selection process but more importantly here in the region on helping our existing industries and manufacturers, cities and counties, making sure that we’re drawing the workforce needed that we possibly can but also having a high level of information.”

Strouth says they don’t have an exact timeline as to when the survey will be conducted, but he says it likely will be getting underway in the next 30 days or so.

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