Build the talent system, then recruit for it

Nearly every community we work with is asking a version of the same question. How do we develop and keep the people our economy needs?

The pressure looks different depending on where you sit. Fast-growing cities are pricing out the workers their employers depend on. Legacy communities watch young people leave and count the loss. Suburbs often have strong employers and weak connections to residents living three miles away. Rural regions work with thinner pipelines and fewer providers.

A slower-moving labor market makes the question more pressing. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported a hires rate of 3.3 percent in May 2026 and a quits rate of 1.9 percent. Employers are hiring cautiously, and fewer workers are changing jobs.

Communities make more progress when talent attraction, workforce development, and economic development operate as one system. Four shifts help build it.

Start with the talent already there

Most communities can say how many degrees they award, which jobs employers are posting, and whether their population is growing. Far fewer can say how much of the talent already living there is being fully used.

Strada Education Foundation and the Burning Glass Institute found that 52 percent of graduates whose highest credential is a bachelor’s degree were underemployed one year after graduation. A decade later, 45 percent remained in jobs that typically do not require a four-year degree. That represents a substantial pool of people already in the labor market but not connected to work that makes full use of their education.

Build a talent inventory the way you would build a site inventory. Who is working below their training? Who earned a credential abroad but cannot get it recognized here? Which neighborhoods sit a short commute from a growing cluster but send few workers into it? Much of this information is already collected or licensed. Bringing it together can show where hiring, credentialing, training, or access barriers are blocking advancement.

Make skills-based hiring real

Hundreds of major employers have announced that they are dropping degree requirements. The results so far are modest. Harvard Business School and the Burning Glass Institute found that only 3.6 percent of roles dropped a degree requirement during the period studied. Within those roles, the share of hires without a bachelor’s degree rose 3.5 percentage points. Economywide, that represents an estimated 97,000 additional opportunities out of 77 million annual hires.

Changing a job posting opens a door only if screening and selection change with it. Public partners can help employers test whether that has happened. What changed in the applicant tracking system? What does the screening rubric look like now? How were hiring managers retrained? How are candidates entering through the new pathway performing and advancing? The answers show whether a pathway is real and where it may still be breaking down.

Fund earnings gains, not activity

Several randomized evaluations of sector-focused training found earnings gains ranging from 11 to 40 percent in the years after training. These programs work primarily by moving people into higher-wage jobs, which is why placement counts alone understate the return.

The model matters. So does the operator. MDRC’s ten-year evaluation of WorkAdvance tested one model across four providers. All four increased earnings at some point. By Year 10, St. Nicks Alliance had increased average earnings by 32 percent. The other three providers showed no statistically significant effect on the study’s main outcomes that year.

Public funders should measure earnings growth, advancement, and job quality by provider. Those results should guide program improvement and future investment.

Treat child care and transportation as economic infrastructure

Communities routinely invest in roads and utility extensions to land an employer. The systems that determine whether residents can accept and keep those jobs deserve the same economic lens. ReadyNation estimates that insufficient child care for children under five costs families and employers $172 billion each year through lost earnings, job-search expenses, and reduced productivity.

That is a labor supply constraint. So is a bus route that does not reach the industrial park on second shift or housing that prices out the workers a hospital system needs.

The question for a local strategy is simple. Can a qualified resident accept the job and keep it? If the answer depends on child care, transportation, or housing, those belong in the workforce strategy.

Retention is a result, not a campaign

Alumni networks and young professional councils build connection. They work best alongside economic opportunity rather than in place of it. People tend to stay where they can see a next step: a job that uses what they know, a path to a better one, and the practical conditions that make staying possible.

None of this argues against talent attraction. Recruitment still matters. But it should add to a system that is already working for the people who live there, not substitute for one. Start with them.

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