Located in:
I. b. Plan Introduction or Executive Summary
The Unified or Combined State Plan may include an introduction or executive summary. This element is optional.
Current Narrative:
North Carolina’s Unified State Plan is comprised of both strategic and operational planning elements. Strategic planning elements include analyses of North Carolina’s economic conditions, workforce characteristics, and workforce development activities. These analyses lay the groundwork for the state’s workforce development system’s vision and goals and provide a framework for the delivery of workforce development programs and services that assist North Carolina’s citizens and businesses with achieving economic prosperity.
Operational planning elements identify efforts that support the State’s Workforce Development strategic vision and goals. The operational planning sections provide descriptions of the state’s infrastructure, policies, and activities that are in place to help deliver workforce services to individuals and businesses and help the state’s workforce development system to achieve its strategic goals.
Introduction
North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper’s mission is to ensure North Carolinians are better educated, healthier, and have more money in their pockets so that they can live more abundant, purposeful lives. The cornerstone to achieving this goal is to help people get good-paying jobs to support themselves and their families. Through NC Job Ready, Governor Cooper’s workforce development initiative, North Carolina is working to build a stronger and better workforce. NC Job Ready is built on three core principles: education and skills attainment are the foundation to a strong and resilient workforce; an employer-led workforce development system is key to the growth of a highly skilled and job ready workforce; and local innovation is critical to a dynamic and effective workforce system.
Through targeted investments and strategies in workforce development and job training, NC Job Ready is helping people obtain good-paying jobs that support themselves and their families. North Carolina’s workforce development system is helping to implement NC Job Ready by connecting workers with career services and job training and helping employers by providing a pipeline of skilled workers they need to grow and succeed.
North Carolina’s State Workforce Development Board, the NCWorks Commission, developed and adopted a new strategic plan in May of 2019 and incorporated the Governor’s vision into its strategic planning process. The plan was developed with interagency input from partners at the state and local level and sets forth a vision and strategic goals for North Carolina’s workforce development system, providing a framework for the delivery of workforce development services in North Carolina. The plan focuses on the coordination and alignment of the state’s workforce programs and provided the foundation for the development of North Carolina’s Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act State Unified Plan.
Through its strategic planning efforts, the NCWorks Commission developed a vision and mission for North Carolina’s Workforce System. This vision is to build a job-ready workforce to strengthen North Carolina companies, attract new businesses, and ensure our state can adapt to a changing economy. The mission of the state’s workforce development system, is to ensure North Carolina has an innovative, relevant, effective, and efficient workforce development system that develops adaptable, work-ready, skilled talent to meet the current and future needs of workers and businesses to achieve and sustain economic prosperity, and to ensure North Carolinians are ready for the jobs of today and tomorrow by increasing access to education and skills training, fostering employer leadership to prepare workers, and supporting and scaling local innovation.
The state’s workforce development system is comprised of partners at the state and local level and is collectively referred to as the NCWorks system. The North Carolina Unified State Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act Plan provides a description of the state’s strategy and operational elements for the delivery of workforce development programs and services through its NCWorks system.