2. Developing Economic Development Strategies.
Strictly speaking, WIBs are not in the business of developing economic development strategies; their mission is workforce development. But, increasingly, that mission and the mission of economic development are colliding, as the nature of the labor force becomes more and more central to the economic fate of a region. Therefore, it is likely that WIBs will find themselves working with economic development agencies at the state and local level on broad regional strategies.

The "lay of the land" economic audit WIB's conduct should, in fact, begin to uncover some key economic development issues. For example, it could point to the fact that the traditional economic base of the region is declining and the emerging industries are having trouble finding suitable labor because of a skill mis-match. It could indicate that whole sectors of the population are being left behind because they don't have the skills needed by the regional economy. And so on.

The approach WIBs could take to developing strategies for addressing these problems is very similar to the one just described for developing strategies to serve TANF recipients. And again, some of the data they need could have been put together when they did their basic economic audit. But special research, including firm surveys and interviews, would also be necessary.

3. Creating Labor Market Information Products.
Finally, one of the responsibilities of the WIB is to provide its jobseeker and employer customers with as much information as possible about the local labor market. One way to do this is through the development of specific labor market information products—e.g. brochures, databases, presentations—that address a variety of questions and problems. Examples include: useful reports describing key industries and the kind of job opportunities they offer; on-line versions of the same thing; industry briefings for job seekers, that include background information on an industry and presentations by managers and workers; focused reports on specific problems (such as poverty or welfare reform); evaluations of the overall economic health of the region (from the perspective of both employers and job seekers). Again, some WIBs will only have the resources to produce such products in very limited form and will have to look to the state or to the private sector to do anything more sophisticated. But all WIBs will want to begin to use labor market information to help their customers meet their labor market goals.