• Aviation / Aerospace
  • 2003 Aviation/Aerospace Assessment (pdf, 4.29MB)
  • 2003 Aviation/Aerospace Assessment-Final Report (pdf, 1.51MB)
    
• Financial Services
• Homeland Security/Defense
  
• Information Technology
  
  • Computer/Communications Equipment
  • Information Services
  • Photonics
  • Semiconductor Technology
  • Software Development
  • Telecommunications
• Life Sciences/Heatlh Care
  • Biomedical/Biotechnology in Florida White Paper (pdf)
• Modeling, Simulation and Training
• Plastics
  

Florida's Incumbent Worker Training Program provides employers with funds to train currently employed workers in an effort to keep their firms and workers competitive, particularly small businesses and those located in rural areas or distressed inner cities. Incumbent Worker Training (IWT) addresses retraining needed to meet changing skill requirements caused by new technology, retooling, new product lines and new organizational structuring.

Created in 1999, the program receives an annual appropriation of $2 million. Click here for more information, including a copy of the IWT application. Click here to read the most recent IWT annual report.

The Quick Response Training Program (QRT) provides grants to businesses creating new high skills/high wages jobs that require customized entry-level training.

Since the QRT program was enacted in July of 1993, it has had a key role in the location or expansion decision of more than 300 value-added, competitive economic development projects. These projects have directly created over 85,000 new high skills/high wages jobs. Florida residents hired to fill these new jobs have received customized training that will increase their employability now and in the future. Because of the popularity of the program, demand has exceeded the annual appropriated amounts by a ratio of 3 to 1. Click here for more information, including a copy of the QRT application.

Florida’s Workforce Estimating Conference and Targeted Occupations. A key consideration in Florida’s workforce development strategy is linking training and education programs with the needs of business. Employers and workers both benefit when high-paying, high-demand jobs are filled. Needs of businesses are identified through a state-mandated occupational forecasting conference which ranks occupations by their projected number of openings (business-demand) and growth rate, as well as the anticipated entry-level and average wage rates. The state list generated is used to target training programs through the state’s performance-based incentive system. From this state list, local areas develop a regional list that reflects the needs in their communities, with an opportunity twice annually to modify it. Click here here for more information on the Workforce Estimating Conference and the Regional Targeted Occupations List.

Regional Business Competitiveness Committees also play a key role in the state strategy. Business-dominated committees at the local level encourages collaboration among their members--business, economic development representatives, and training providers--to focus on creating a more business-responsive workforce development system and to ensure that the region's economic development strategy and workforce development strategy are mutually supportive. Local committees make annual recommendations to Workforce Florida on:

• Improving the responsiveness of training in the region to business and economic development opportunities; and
  
• How best to integrate federal and state workforce funding to improve training and job placements with local businesses.
  
• Occupations in the region that are critical to business retention, expansion and recruitment activities. Once evaluated and approved by the WFI Board, these occupations can be added to the region's targeted occupational list;