Workforce Analysis

The primary labor market for DOE operations at the PORTS site has historically been residents of surrounding southern Ohio communities that fall within the federal designation of Appalachian Ohio. The PORTSfuture Program Workforce Analysis study area encompassed the Ohio Valley Regional Development Commission (OVRDC) 12-county service area that includes Adams, Brown, Clermont, Fayette, Gallia, Highland, Jackson, Lawrence, Ross, Scioto, and Vinton counties. The OVRDC region serves as a reasonable labor market for current and future jobs due to the proximity of these counties to the DOE PORTS site.

The workforce analysis has four areas of focus. The first section of this document is the OVRDC Region Workforce Strength Analysis. This analysis was conducted to determine skills that are concentrated in the regional labor market and to identify workforce strengths of the region.

The second section of this document is the Partner Survey Analysis. This analysis was conducted to identify workforce needs during construction phases and operations and maintenance phases for companies currently operating/expanding at the PORTS site as well as planned developments by private industry. Companies participating in the survey included those with active projects planned at the time of the study including Centrus Energy Corp., Mission Conversion Services Alliance DUF6, Trillium H2Power, and Hecate Energy. Companies were queried to identify summary information on the company, employment needs including numbers of workers that will be needed, by occupation, during both construction/expansion phase and ongoing operations and maintenance phase, duration of time workers will be needed, pay ranges, required security levels, company recruitment and worker retention challenges, workforce trends over the next 3-5 years, preferred training programs and/or partnerships programs companies would utilize if available, and experience with employing labor unions.

The third section of this document is the Labor Training Center Analysis. This analysis created an inventory of the scope and capacity of apprenticeship programs to address the workforce needs for existing regional apprenticeship programs that recruit and train workers. Eight apprenticeship programs were surveyed including USW Local 689 Appalachian Career Empowerment (ACE), Boilermakers Local 105, KORCC Training Center, Iron Workers Local, 172 JATC, Ohio Laborers Training Center, Ohio Operating Engineers, Plumbers and Pipefitters Local 577 Joint Apprenticeship and Training Committee (JATC), and the Electrical Training Academy. Apprenticeship programs were queried to identify service area coverage, branches of trade offered, skills required, and compensation, training centers’ capacity and graduation output, training centers and higher education institutions partnerships, additional specialized training programs offered, and recruitment and outreach strategies.

The fourth section of this document provides recommendations for consideration and illustrates alignment of training programs to employer workforce needs. Fifty-one unique occupations were identified in the analysis across the four participating employers with 30 of those occupations in construction phases and 23 of those occupations in the ongoing operations and maintenance phases. Two of the occupations overlapped both categories thus there were 51 unique occupations in total. Occupations were matched to available training programs. Gaps were identified for some occupations that are needed that could not be trained by apprenticeship programs with many of these occupations requiring higher education degrees.