Windsor-Essex's employment planning council is going high-tech to show where the region's jobs are.
Workforce Windsor-Essex has put out a new brochure and an interactive online mapping tool designed to help job-seekers see where the region has most of its job openings. The mapping tool has been put into place specifically to show how transportation can be a roadblock to somebody applying for or receiving a job.
Heather Gregg, manager of employer engagement at Workforce Windsor-Essex, says they have spent over a year examining the relationship between job location and transportation.
"We wanted to investigate this a little bit further and look to attach some evidence behind what the transportation looks like and how, so we visually represent what it looks like as a barrier to employment," says Gregg.
The map shows information coming directly from the job postings put out by employers. With the key focus being on transportation, proximity to public transport is a key factor as well as the physical location of these jobs.
"What we were able to pull from that are job postings by postal code," says Gregg. "So we can zero in on those geographies where there are large numbers of job postings and then look at where those job postings lie."
Different factors were put into play while compiling the data, Gregg says. In addition to location, the mapping device can highlight areas of labour needs that are catered to the job seeker's education and skill level, and attempts to answer some common questions job-seekers have.
"Is there a certain level of education that's required for those job postings?" says Gregg. "What kind of occupations are being posted? What kind of industries are frequently posting these jobs in our region? So it gave us a lot of great information."
The mapping tool points out various centres of labour activity in both Windsor and Essex County, represented by colour-coded pie charts. The colours represent different employers in that particular area and the size of each "slice of the pie" represents the number of reported job postings in that area throughout the year per employer, Gregg says. The size of the pie itself is related to total volume of job postings.
To use the interactive mapping tool or obtain a brochure discussing the data gathered in this process, click here.