Guest Writer: Ethan Laufenberg, Business Intelligence Intern

It’s no secret that there’s a nationwide workforce shortage. With that said, it’s crucial to understand what the skills shortage looks like here in Fond du Lac County and highlight what jobs are most in-demand. For today’s blog post, we consulted our trusted economic modeling tool Emsi.

Currently, Fond du Lac County’s most in-demand include (from most to least in-demand): nursing, merchandising, restaurant operation, auditing, warehousing, caregiving, flatbed truck operation, packaging and labeling, selling techniques, and accounting. All of these in-demand skills exceed the national average demand, with the exception of merchandising, auditing, selling techniques, and accounting.

As one might expect, these in-demand skills correspond fairly closely to the most in-demand jobs over the past year. This figure is found by monitoring which occupations have the most unique job postings on the web (‘Unique jobs’ referring to non-duplicated postings. If a single job was posted on Linkedin and Zip Recruiter, that is one unique job posting). Again, from greatest to least these include: transportation and material moving (803 unique postings), healthcare practitioners (512 unique postings), sales (386 unique postings), production (336 unique postings), office and administrative support (276 unique postings), management (263 unique postings), food preparation (200 unique postings), healthcare support (177 unique postings), and business and financial operations (161 unique postings).

From this information, I would like to highlight the high amount of transportation and material moving jobs. These jobs have a demand almost 57% greater than the next largest category (healthcare practitioners) and directly relate to a top in-demand skill, flatbed truck operation. This local data shows and supports the larger nation-wide trucker shortage trend, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the American Trucking Association, there is a shortage of over 60,000 workers nationally in this occupation (The U.S. Truck Driver Shortages – Fact or Fiction? – Trucker Job USA)

So, if you’re in need of a new job and possess these in-demand skills, you should highlight these capabilities in your resume or cover letter. Or, if you’re considering making a career change, this information should give you a good idea of what industries or businesses to explore here in Fond du Lac County. These in-demand skills and jobs will no doubt continue to persist into the near future. Here at Envision we continue to monitor workforce and industry trends to inform how our organization and county might capitalize on these post-pandemic trends.