CONCORD, NH - With New Hampshire’s unemployment rate dropping this month from 2.1 percent to 1.9 percent, the Department of Business and Economic Affairs (BEA) released an analysis on the state of workforce needs and strategies to address shortages in top growth sectors.
“The results of this analysis will help employers, regional support organizations, and the state remain in position to retain and grow New Hampshire’s competitive advantages by meeting the workforce needs of our economy,” said BEA Commissioner Taylor Caswell.
The new analysis provides specific data on what the workforce needs are across the state’s top five growth sectors and what specific positions represent the highest need across those sectors. The results of this analysis will inform individual employer strategies, enable BEA and the state to focus training resources on certifications that will have the most value to employers, and inform enhanced workforce recruitment and retention marketing strategies.
BEA will also develop a slate of marketing assets, including images, videos, and digital assets, for use by New Hampshire employers and economic development partners. These will reflect the findings in the analysis and include Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) that represent geographic areas for targeted recruitment marketing.
“Together, these tools are designed to provide an open-source library of granular workforce data and associated creative assets that can be used in employer-specific advertising/marketing that is consistent with the ongoing recruitment work BEA is doing,” Caswell said.
The BEA analysis projects 197,000 new job openings in these sectors over the next decade, providing significant detail on this number, including identifying specific positions that represent the most significant needs, and in virtually all cases, those are positions that are needed in each of the five growth sectors.
“We will be working with our partners across the state to get these tools put to use over the next several months,” Caswell said.
A brief overview of the workforce analysis:
- Focus on the following top growth sectors:
- Technology
- Healthcare
- Hospitality
- Construction
- Manufacturing
- At current trends over the next 10 years, there will be 197,000 openings in these sectors.
- Population growth alone won't cover the gap.
- Analysis drills down to what actual positions across those sectors create targets for closing the gap, including:
- Operations managers
- Software developers
- Truck drivers
- Sales reps
- Registered nurses
- BEA will use the report to move more aggressively to design an increased collaborative training and retention approach among industries and economic development partners including:
- Skill transfers
- Increase training pipeline
- Retain more students
- Retain more employees through promotion and training
- Showcase trades as career
- Diversify the workforce
- Improved communication
- The analysis also calls for continued efforts to attract workforce from outside New Hampshire with focus on:
- Commuters
- Targeted MSAs based on these skill needs.
The full report is available on BEA’s
website.