How a better data framework is helping Illinois improve workforce development
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The Illinois Department of Employment Security’s framework is helping officials and other stakeholders better understand trends in unemployment data.
Illinois is on a mission to process people through the state’s unemployment insurance program and link them with jobs more quickly and efficiently. To do that, improving the state’s approach to administrative and labor market data is the first step.
The Illinois Department of Employment Security is leveraging an enhanced data environment developed by the nonprofit Coleridge Initiative, which gives state leaders a closer look into employment and labor trends based on unemployment insurance claims data across Illinois.
By analyzing data like layoff events across industries; wage and hours information; the time it takes for UI applications to be certified; how long people were using UI assistance; and other insights, officials can better target interventions and policy actions that help drive necessary workforce and education development efforts, said Ahu Yildirmaz, president and CEO of the Coleridge Initiative.
“[L]abor force information is critical for decision-making at all levels of the workforce development system from leadership and governance managers to planners and program directors to career counselors and other frontline staff,” said Marty Johnson, director of labor market information at IDES, in an email to Route Fifty. “The analysis of labor market data and related workforce research assists in data-driven planning by state and local governments that ensures the best return on investment.”
For the last five years, the IDES has worked with the Coleridge Initiative to implement the nonprofit’s Administrative Data Research Facility research platform. The tool helps improve data sharing and analysis for government users, universities and other partners through dashboards that are updated weekly, Johnson said.
Using the platform’s data insights, the state has been able to reduce the time needed to manage research requests by more than 30%, which has resulted in an up to 15% increase in the number of approved projects aimed at addressing workforce gaps in the state, Yildirmaz said.
The ADRF platform also allows users to obtain deeper insights, such as people’s financial stress before and after becoming unemployed, region-specific UI claimant data, claimants’ education levels, demographic information and more, she said.
Beyond improving the research process, the ADRF has enabled the state to optimize its UI operations management practices by, for example, enabling frontline staff like job counselors to identify claimants who are approaching the end of their benefit duration so they can prioritize who to support with finding employment opportunities, Johnson explained.
Platform insights can also help “our partners in economic development … recognize subsectors of industries which might benefit from available interventions or grant funds for training and upskilling opportunities,” she said.
With the platform, Illinois can ultimately enable more efficient cross-agency collaboration in the future as it expands its workforce development efforts, as well as serve as a model for other states looking to improve their use of labor market data, Yildirmaz said.
With data models like ADRF, she said, leaders “are able to transform complex data into actionable and real-time decisions that optimize workforce program targeting, staff deployment and economic planning.”