19F - WIA STRATEGIC PLAN 2013-2017

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of Santa Ana households to create livable income through multiple wage - earners per household, the requirement that youth programs provide living stipends to their most at -risk populations, the high need for English learning to supplement Spanish spoken at home, and the shrinking State budgets for workforce development, to stifle many of the options for addressing the education gap. More important, studies by UCLA and the LAEDC indicate that the situation is not likely to be aided by demographic change. The Orange County population is aging, and EMSI shows that Santa Ana's is as well. For Orange County as a whole, 27.6% of the population is under age 19. That number is 32.7% for Santa Ana. At the other end of the spectrum, 11.2% of Orange County's population is over 65, vs 8.2% for Santa Ana. In addition, the California Department of Finance and Community Indicators show that migrants into Orange County from all sources, especially Mexico and several countries in Asia, once drove its population growth. But as of the period from 2008 -2010, internal growth and migration from Los Angeles County and elsewhere are driving that growth. This trend reinforces the serious need for training and for strategies that both enhance its quality and increase its quantity and the need to think regionally and act locally. From Analysis to Goals The demographic, workforce, cluster, industry, and job gap analysis transform the strategic vision into a set of more concrete strategic goals: • Stimulate full time living wage employment for Santa Ana residents in both local and regional industries. This implies the following sub - goals: • Create relationships with small and large businesses (and as appropriate the human resource departments of larger concerns), to identify current and evolving job opportunities and to learn what employers look for in candidates. • Continue and expand study of strong and emerging industry clusters, and high wage /high value jobs in the region and industries in the City. • Support small business and entrepreneurship through training, simplification of regulations, and the established avenues of public or public /private counseling. • Focus on the four key clusters to establish training criteria for adults and youth, but do not neglect the traditional sources of high employment and employment turnover, especially in manufacturing. • Strengthen the technology business support activities of incubators and accelerators in identifying sources of emerging job needs. • Intensify business attraction and retention activities for Santa Ana in support of making Orange County a regional, state, national, and international business leader, and Santa Ana increasingly self - sufficient in the job market. • Enhance all elements of job training that support infrastructure. This includes: 24 19F -29