North Jersey Partners: Regional Workforce Collaboration

With diminishing government resources and the growing need for effective programs and policies, cross-cutting regional collaborations are becoming increasingly important for addressing North Jersey’s challenges. North Jersey Partners - a collaboration of Workforce Investment Boards in the North Jersey region - is at the forefront of regional workforce collaboration, understanding that unlike many government policies and programs, workers and employers are not bound to jurisdictional lines. Building on the great work that has been done by the State of New Jersey and other county and local leaders, North Jersey Partners hopes to reinforce its regional approach to workforce issues and ensure workforce planning is integrally tied to regional transportation, land use and economic development planning.

PROJECT INTRODUCTION

North Jersey Partners is a regional workforce volunteer collaboration between the Workforce Investment Boards (WIB) within eight study area counties and includes: the Bergen WIB, Essex WIB, Hudson WIB, Morris-Sussex-Warren WIB, Passaic WIB, Union WIB, Jersey City WIB and Newark WIB. The partnership was created under the U.S. Department of Labor’s Workforce Innovation in Regional Economic Development (WIRED) initiative in 2006, which promoted regional integration of talent development, workforce and economic development activities. Today, North Jersey Partners facilitates peer exchanges and serves as a coalition for advocacy on regional workforce issues.

In support of North Jersey Partner’s mission, this local demonstration project proposes to:

• Understand the current and emerging employment trends across the region
• Deepen knowledge of skills gaps for current and emerging employment
• Offer solutions that address gaps in transportation between population centers and centers of employment
• Strengthen existing partnerships through coordinated, well-defined regional economic strategies

The ultimate objective is to provide the background research necessary for North Jersey Partners to pursue a regional workforce strategy that is integrated with regional transportation and economic development. A key milestone of this project was the Regional Workforce Symposium held on June 10, 2014 in collaboration with the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) and ManufactureNJ - in which approximately 100 professionals in the fields of workforce, economic development, private industry, planning, education, transportation and policy learned about regional economic and workforce trends and completed an interactive brainstorming activity.