ARC Seminar 2008 - Day 1

The 2008 ARC Seminar is now underway. It is a clear, crisp fall day here in St. Louis.

This morning, Marc Anderberg from the Texas Workforce Commission talked to us about "green collar workers". Since "green" appears to be the new buzz word for 2008, the term gets used frequently. As Marc pointed out, what constitutes a "green job" is something that is often hard to discern. The greennesss of a job, even within a single occupation varies by the nature of the business, the work assignments and an employer's rules and policies. Analysts need to be able to "cut through the fog of overlapping, conflicting and even nonsensical uses of the terms green jobs and green collar workers before they can give valid and reliable information abut the workers employed in them" and the be able to identify the knowlege, skills and abilities for green employment. That may require customers to provide definitions for "green" occupations or industries in terms that make their questions answerable.