Labor Reporting is the Key to Site Selection

In last week’s blog post we talked about the competitive landscape for large corporate site selection based on incentives.  The response we had was really great from emails to Facebook comments to calls we received from local folks who care about growing our region.  However, incentives are one of many key economic development drivers (and usually NOT the most important one!). 

The most important driver of economic development success is the quality of the talent and availability of our local workforce.  Texarkana has been blessed with abundant labor, people with a great work ethic and a willingness to go the extra mile to support their employer.  However the real match that employers are looking for is more nuanced than that.  Specific skills are critical.

To highlight how important this issue is please watch the attached video that was sent to us by one of our Chamber partners who works in economic development.  It’s time to ask the Arkansas and Texas Workforce agencies to answer the question: “What does our workforce look like and how do we position it to compete and win new companies in this global economy?”.  If we don’t have those answers ready, it’s time to get it done.

This site selector makes the case that we should sell to our skills instead of trying to “waste our time” trying to sell to a company that has a skills mismatch.