By: David Gillespie, EVP, Florida Chamber Foundation
Welcome to FL 2030 Benchmarks, a monthly e-news brief, brought to you by the Florida Chamber Foundation team. This newsletter is designed to keep you – our Board of Trustees, Community Development Partners, advisory board members, and other important stakeholders – updated on our collective efforts in play to move the needle forward to 2030.
As our good friend Madeline Pumariega, President of Miami-Dade College, said at the 2022 Florida Economic Outlook & Jobs Solution Summit, “2030 is now,” and there is still much work to be done in reaching the 39 goals outlined in the Florida 2030 Blueprint’s Six Pillars Framework. The actions we take over the next eight years will be instrumental to our success in making Florida a top ten global economy by 2030. The only way to build America’s BEST workforce, grow and diversify Florida’s economy, create solid infrastructure systems, address education (at all ages), and ensure Florida is a place where EVERY resident has an equal opportunity at earned success and a great quality of life, no matter their zip code, is to unite the Florida business community for collective impact. We must ensure the right things keep happening in Florida and that you, our investors and stakeholders, are at the forefront of assisting to significantly influence and unify businesses to effect the necessary change.
When we rang in the 2020 New Year, no one could have predicted a global pandemic, nor that it would continue to have ripple effects well into now. Impacts have spanned from education to workforce, touching every industry, as illustrated in our 2021 Florida Workforce Needs Study. Even so, Florida has a lot to celebrate, including advancing from the 17th to the 15th largest economy in the world, due in part to Florida remaining open for business when many other state competitors such as New York and Illinois chose a different path.
As we collaboratively work to unite Florida businesses on the road to 2030, the Florida Chamber Foundation is still committed to being the vehicle for game-changing and informative research that will help us adjust course when and where necessary, while retaining a keen eye on our eventual 2030 destination. We look forward to sharing the following research efforts with you:
The Florida COVID-19 Impact Study will highlight notable causal effects the pandemic has had on the behavioral and mental health of our citizens, childcare, worker productivity and childhood poverty to name a few. This study is scheduled to be released next month.
The Florida Chamber Foundation is updating the research of the Florida Trade & Logistics Research Reports previously published in 2010 and 2013. The purpose of our newest research report, Florida Trade and Logistics 2030, is to provide the strategies that will continue to position Florida as a global hub for trade, logistics, manufacturing, and related services. This report will be unveiled at the upcoming 2022 Florida Transportation, Growth & Infrastructure Solution Summit on April 28th.
The Florida Workforce Needs Study 2.0 research will officially begin this afternoon with the launch of part one the Florida Workforce Needs Survey 2.0. This two-year research program, a follow-up effort to the 2021 Florida Workforce Needs Study, will further examine COVID-19 impacts and provide additional insight into how businesses and educational institutions can partner to close the skills gaps in Florida’s workforce. We will engage the business community through quarterly surveys over the next two years to create the baseline for this important research. We invite you to share your organization’s evolving workforce needs by taking the survey today!
We have also recently entered into a partnership with a national foundation which will allow us to accelerate the awareness and call-to-action across Florida – at the zip code level – on the ten root causes of poverty. More details on this are forth-coming. It is our hope that you will join us in giving this research a voice in your communities, and all over Florida, to amplify the mission of the Florida 2030 Blueprint.
I am honored to serve you and the entire Florida Chamber Foundation team of teams to advance the 2030 mission we are on. I am thankful for the work that you do across Florida to keep Florida, Florida and ensure we remain poised as a viable global competitor.
I’m looking forward to seeing many of you in Jacksonville at our 2022 Florida Transportation, Growth & Infrastructure Solution Summit, April 28th, where we will discuss the impact of some of Florida’s key industries such as water, energy, transportation, telecommunications, trade and logistics, to name a few, on the future of Florida’s infrastructure.
I welcome your feedback, questions, comments and suggestions. Please email me at dgillespie@flchamber.com or give me a call directly at 850-521-1254, or via cell, 850-228-1572.
V/R,
David