NC Announces Plans to Build, Develop & Launch NCCareers.org

Thanks to a collaborative effort among various workforce development stakeholders, the State of North Carolina will build and launch a comprehensive, unified system to deliver career information and labor market data to students, workers, business leaders and educators, Governor Roy Cooper announced today at a meeting of the Education Cabinet.  

NCCareers.org will help students identify promising careers while assisting business leaders to find skilled workers and empowering educators to guide students towards the best career paths for the future.

While career information is currently available at NCCareers.org, the new system is expected to launch this fall.

“Everyone needs reliable information to make informed education, training and career decisions,” Governor Cooper said. “NCCareers.org will help close the career information gap, providing people with the knowledge to make smarter career choices that will help put more money in their pockets.”

Today, North Carolina has both an information and a preparation gap regarding careers, a gap that impacts employers’ ability to find the talent they need and a worker’s ability to find rewarding employment. As the state’s economy has grown and evolved, occupations, work environments and employers’ needs have shifted significantly.  However, many students and workers aren’t aware of how significantly these shifts have altered job requirements, employer expectations and the educational credentials and training required to land these jobs of the future.

NCCareers.org will provide North Carolinians a high-quality and unified career information system accessible to everyone. The system, which will include a comprehensive web portal as well as print and mobile-friendly tools, will deliver the best career information tools available, tailored to the unique contours of North Carolina and its education and workforce development programs. The system will help people explore many aspects of planning a career, from researching the wages needed to reach various lifestyle levels; searching for the best occupations to match one’s interests, values and skills; and finding specific labor market information and training resources.

To create this one-stop shop for career data and information, many North Carolina organizations have been engaged for some time in a collaborative and strategic planning process that enters a new phase of execution with today’s announcement. The core group of partners has been organized and led to this point by leaders in the Department of Commerce’s Labor & Economic Analysis Division (LEAD), a team that provides much of the state’s labor market and economic data. Additional core partners for NCCareers.org include the North Carolina Community College System, the North Carolina Department of Health & Human Services (DHHS) and its Vocational Rehabilitation unit, the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, the University of North Carolina System, NC State Education Assistance Authority as well as the Workforce Solutions Division at the Department of Commerce.