Clackamas Workforce Partnership makes critical investments in workforce training and education so businesses can be competitive and prosperous. Our workforce initiatives and programs provide employment and training solutions which save businesses time, money and energy by finding and retaining a highly skilled workforce. Small business owners and large corporations alike can connect to valuable resources through our site.
Clackamas Coordinated Business Services (CCBS) is a network of 11 workforce system partners with a mission to be responsive and accountable to employers in Clackamas County through efficient coordination of collection resources.
Rapid Response is a free, publicly-funded (no cost to participants) service that works to connect employers to programs to minimize or prevent potential layoffs and to connect recently or soon-to-be laid off workers to the various public services available to them to help navigate job loss, including unemployment insurance benefits, health care coverage, training and education resources, career counseling services, and more. Rapid Response services were created as a part of the Workforce Investment Act of 1998 and as this service is funded at the federal level, there is no cost for either employers or employees to utilize them.
Rapid Response: Helping Employers and Employees Facing Layoffs
Over the past year, the COVID-19 pandemic has caused regional unemployment claims to reach historic levels. Some economists predict our region’s jobs will not return to pre-pandemic levels until 2025.
Historically, many of our community members — Black, Indigenous and other People of Color, women, immigrants, individuals with disabilities, have suffered from the result of having less access to education and lower incomes AND they have disproportionately suffered from the health and economic devastation caused by this public health crisis. The aftermath of this crisis calls for deliberate and bold changes to stabilize our workforce and ensure our region can successfully move forward.
One of those changes is coming out of The Columbia Willamette Workforce Collaborative (CWWC), and that is the development of a Quality Jobs Initiative.
The initiative is a commitment to designing and developing a regional approach with workers, employers, job seekers, community-based organizations, economic developers, and local municipalities to define, support, and promote quality jobs.
Because we recognize the importance of integrating a regional perspective into the work we do, Clackamas Workforce Partnership makes up one-third of the Columbia-Willamette Workforce Collaborative (CWWC). Together, the Collaborative aligns capabilities and resources to improve the region’s ability to leverage and layer funding streams, to coordinate ideas and strategies, to pursue resources and fill gaps, to link workforce supply and industry demand, and enable life-long learning and advancement. Both at a local regional level, Clackamas Workforce Partnership is working to develop strategies to best serve sectors that have the most need and potential for workforce development. This includes construction, healthcare, manufacturing and technology.
As part of a unified approach, Clackamas Workforce Partnership serves industry partners to support economic development within Clackamas County, and guide public workforce investments in the Portland-Vancouver-Metropolitan area. We work with industry partners to create “sectors” that help to identify and remove barriers that stand in the way a skilled workforce.
