Regional Labor Market Info Now Online - Chesterfield Business News

Powerful New Tool Now Available to Help Region’s Workforce

Are you …

• …interested in changing careers but want to know what education and experience you will need?

• …a business owner hiring for a new position and need to know what salary and benefits are competitive in our region?

• …an educator who wants to know if your curriculum will fit our community’s needs?

• …looking for a job and need daycare arrangements ?

• …the director of a growing international business interested in building a facility in
Richmond and need to know if qualified workers are available?

Now you can find answers to these questions and literally thousands of others on a new
Web site called the Workforce Wizard. You can enter the site at http://www.usworks.com/greaterrichmond/
or http://www.usworks.com/craterregion/.
You’ll then have access to information for the entire
Central Virginia area, for Greater Richmond or for the Crater region.

This new Web site is brimming with up-to-date, local data based on a survey of more than
2,400 businesses with 10 or more employees throughout the Richmond-Petersburg-Emporia
region. The venture is made available through a collaboration of WORKFORCE ONE and the Appomattox Basin Industrial Development Corp. (ABIDCO). Both groups promote workforce development and know the value of a ready and available workforce to the economic health of the region.

The distinctive features of the Workforce Wizard are that it provides timely, local data and that the Web site is interactive. This means users can search for information based on criteria they select. For example, job seekers can search for jobs by location, by salary or by skill level, and businesses can access local labor market data by occupation or by industry to help make strategic planning decisions.

The Workforce Wizard also offers an excellent employment handbook, and provides links to employers, education and training sources, other search engines, and community resources such as social service agencies. It provides career and industry outlook and
projections, making it useful to business planners, students, trainers and educators, and workforce development professionals.

WORKFORCE ONE is an initiative of the Greater Richmond Chamber of Commerce and the Greater Richmond Partnership, Inc. It is funded in part by a grant/cooperative agreement with the Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development and the Richmond Regional Planning District Commission.

ABIDCO, the Appomattox Basin Industrial Development Corporation, is a private, nonprofit corporation that serves as the economic development marketing organization for the jurisdictions in the southern half of the Richmond/Petersburg metropolitan area.