This section provides a review of economic data points used by aforementioned partners and documents to identify target industries, skills, and occupations. Primary economic data points used to analyze demand for industry labor needs, and emerging skills will be provided in a framework that demonstrates the relationships across variables and how to build data-informed career pathways. Examples of data points include regional gross product, largest and fastest growing sectors, current employment counts by cluster and subcluster, employment projections, employment location quotients, 10th percentile wages, median wages, COL adjusted wages, and skills data by educational attainment, sector and occupation to inform and align education and career pathways, including entry- middle- and high-skilled pathways.

The modernized Career Cluster Framework, hosted by Advance CTE, provides a flexible and data-informed framework for understanding industry sectors and subsector, accompanying occupations and skills, and educational labor supply by sector. As the lead for this career cluster research and discovery, the PI and co-PI will employ the modernized framework in the Toolkit, using the Career Cluster Framework as the foundation for understanding labor market data, career trajectories and further alignment educational pathways.