Workforce Innovation

Business Resources

Resources for Small Business
In November, the City of Sunnyvale Economic Development, Sunnyvale Public Library, NOVA, and the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) presented "Small Business Resource Month," a series of workshops for small business owners and prospective small business entrepreneurs to learn the skills that can help them start, manage, and grow their companies. Several of the workshops, including those on financing, developing a business plan, and SBA as a resource, are available as podcasts through the Sunnyvale Public Library. Also, NOVA and EDD collaborated on a workshop on labor market information resources for small business, which featured a summary of NOVA’s small business study, Silicon Valley: A Small Business Perspective, as well as a demonstration by our local EDD labor market analyst of the wealth of information targeted to business that is available on the Labor Market Information Division website. On this site you can learn about wages you need to offer staff to be competitive locally, job descriptions to aid in interviewing candidates and assessing existing staff, and schools that offer training for improving the job skills of your workers. Check it out!

Cleantech: The Next Engine of the U.S. Economy
America must modernize its energy policies to address the twin challenges of fossil-fuel dependence and man-made climate change. While this work will not be easy, it has the potential to generate immense benefits for our environment and our economy alike. To learn more go to: http://www.ppionline.org/ppi_ci.cfm?knlgAreaID=116&subsecid=900170&contentid=254499

Globalization and American Wages
The continuing integration of the rich United States with a far poorer global economy has provoked much anxiety among American workers. Because it is well-known that basic economic theory predicts that global integration leads to gains for all nations, this anxiety is often treated as a political puzzle. A once again fashionable explanation for this puzzle is that globalization’s benefits are huge but diffuse (primarily, lower prices for imported goods), while its costs are small but concentrated (workers displaced by imports); hence, the gains are hard to see, but the losses are all too visible. To learn more go to: http://www.epi.org/content.cfm/bp196

NOVA’s Workforce Review
The Workforce Review is a two-page fact sheet featuring data on labor force trends, including regional unemployment rate and change, specific labor force data for NOVA’s consortium of cities, and workforce reductions in the NOVA area.