The Southern Illinois Workforce Investment Board submitted an application on behalf of the southern 20 counties in southern Illinois for the Regional Innovation Grant. If funded, the planning activities will begin with the establishment of the SI Works Leadership Team. This team will coordinate the activities to create an integrated regional strategy that supports the future economic development needs while providing meaningful employment opportunities for all residents of southern Illinois. This team will work to identify additional resources to enhance current and long-range regional educational capacities to meet the skills needed for high demand/growth occupations.

A regional Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) analysis will be conducted. This SWOT analysis will be enhanced by a region-wide employer survey. The survey will collect expected hires by occupation, as well as economic development related data such as growth barriers, expansion plans, and relocation plans from local employers. This information will be available to the WIBs via a website and will provide current information to assist job seekers, economic developers, and the employers in the region. It is imperative that new employment opportunities are created. There is an insufficient amount of meaningful jobs in the region for our residents including our dislocated workers.   

These up-to-date hiring projections will be extremely valuable for job seekers in transition. Economic developers in the region will be able to use this information to address the expansion and retention issues of local employers. The information gathered from the survey and the website will be the foundation for future employer surveys. Local business services liaisons will use this as a starting point to begin developing strategies for the ongoing collection of information in response to employers' needs.