Choosing Local Labor Markets

We chose four distinct labor markets in which to carry out our interviews. In part, interviewing employers and education providers in specific areas was necessary because this is the only way to examine both sides of a market; that is, we needed to learn about relationships between specific employers and specific educational institutions, a situation that was possible only if those we interviewed were within the same area. In part, the focus on specific areas emerged from earlier research (Grubb & McDonnell, 1991; McDonnell & Grubb, 1991) that indicated that sub-baccalaureate labor markets are (with some clear exceptions) highly local.[18]

Because there is substantial variation among local labor markets--most obviously, in the mix of sectors and occupations and also in the educational institutions present and their interrelationships--we anticipated that we would find variation among local labor markets in the interaction between providers and employers as well. Therefore, it was desirable to choose areas with substantial diversity among them. In addition to diversity, the criteria for choosing areas included the following:

• Size: We did not want to choose either very large cities with too many providers and employers nor did we want small, rural communities with few employers and a small range of occupations. The areas we chose were therefore mid-sized cities.
• Boundedness: Some urban areas lack distinct boundaries since one city flows into the next; the most obvious examples include large urban sprawls--Los Angeles, for example--but can also include smaller areas. In unbounded areas, firms are likely to hire from providers spread across a wider geographic area and educational providers may also target geographically dispersed firms. It is therefore difficult to develop a complete description of the interactions between providers and employers through interviews, and the logistics of interviewing are more complex. Unfortunately only two of our four communities--Frankton and Rosefield--can be considered reasonably bounded.
• Presence of several postsecondary education providers: Some communities (especially in rural areas) lack community colleges and other postsecondary providers of occupational education and some are dominated by a single institution (usually a community college).[19] Because we wanted to see how employers compare students from different postsecondary institutions, we chose communities with a variety of providers.

While the choice of four communities is unavoidably arbitrary, the four we examined do provide substantial variety. (Fuller descriptions of these four communities are presented in Appendix B.)

• Frankton is a small city of about 350,000 people, with 650,00 in the area,[20] in the midst of a rich farming region. While agriculture services and processing form the core of its employment, it has been diversifying into services and light manufacturing. Its community college with two campuses and a shorter-term training center is well-known within the state for its customized training; in addition, the local providers of vocational education have been quite well coordinated. An area vocational school north of the city is also active in shorter-term training, and a community college twenty miles north of the city is another participant.
• Palmdale is a city of about 750,000, though the standard metropolitan statistical area of which it is a part is considerably larger with a population of 1,500,000. Its employment has concentrated on computer and other high-tech development and manufacturing (including aerospace firms), though it has the full range of other occupations typical of the sub-baccalaureate labor market. Because it is a somewhat sprawling area, its employers can draw on community colleges and area vocational schools within the city of Palmdale and also on two well-known, middle-class community colleges located north of the city.
• Rosefield is a rapidly growing city, the center of an area that now has a population of almost 1,500,000, with the city itself having about 375,000 and the remainder sprawled in a series of suburbs. While employment in government and services formed the core of its economy, it has diversified into high-tech and light manufacturing as well. It includes a system of three community colleges as well as a state college.

These first three communities are all located on the west coast because of the need to carry out interviews without excessive expense. However, the desirability of finding a community in a different region and with a greater emphasis on manufacturing forced us to search for another community:

• Cotooli is a city of about 350,000, the center of an area of 1,450,00 people located in the Midwest. Not only does it include a substantial amount of manufacturing, it is also one of the few manufacturing-oriented communities in the country that has not been devastated by the recession of 1990-1992--partly because it has developed a relatively diverse economy, including sectors like consumer goods that are relatively recession-proof.[21] Cotooli also proves substantially different from the other three communities because of the dominance of a co-op program linking education providers and employers, a program which is more fully described in "The Providers of Education and Their Connections to Employers" section.

Because of Cotooli's location, it was necessary to develop a different method of interviewing. While interviews in Frankton, Palmdale, and Rosefield took place in person, in Cotooli all interviews with education providers took place over the phone. Interviews with employers, always more difficult than those with providers of education and training, took place first in a forum attended by eleven employers and then during a one-week round of intensive interviews with some telephone follow-up. This method seemed to yield information comparable to that of the personal interviews in other communities.

In this monograph, we refer to these four communities by pseudonyms. We do this partly because we promised our respondents anonymity; certain employer representatives were reticent to talk even with this guarantee, as were a few educators. In addition, we have come to some critical conclusions about certain education and employment practices, and anonymity is a way to prevent unnecessary embarrassment--unnecessary because the practices we identify are widespread and because we want to concentrate on the structural aspects of sub-baccalaureate labor markets and not the idiosyncrasies of particular organizations within it.

[18] This earlier research interviewed providers of education and training in eight local labor markets: Sioux City and Des Moines, Iowa; Jacksonville and Miami, Florida; Scranton and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and Fresno and San Jose, California.

[19] Among the eight communities examined in Grubb and McDonnell (1991), two--Sioux City, Iowa, and Jacksonville, Florida--are dominated by the local community college. While it would be interesting to examine hiring practices in such communities, there might be less variation in the responses with only "one game in town."

[20] These are 1990 populations from the Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1991 (U.S. Department of Commerce, 1991), and the area figures are those for the primary metropolitan statistical area.

[21] We chose Cotooli after phone calls to a number of communities in different regions of the country with substantial amounts of manufacturing. In the others, local respondents--usually staff of the Chamber of Commerce or of the city's economic development agency--described conditions in which manufacturers had been laying off workers for the past two or three years, poor conditions in which to interview about hiring practices.