Job Service North Dakota summarizes labor-market trends, programs and outreach including JP3 and H-2A activity

Job Service North Dakota told the Senate Workforce Development Committee about recent labor-market trends, the agency’s programs and outreach efforts, and several federally funded and state-funded initiatives aimed at connecting job seekers with employers.

Marsha Havens, manager for labor market information at Job Service North Dakota, summarized key indicators: the state’s unemployment rate was 2.1% while labor-force participation stood at 68.4%; the state recorded about 13,000 online job openings in the most recent month, a 7% month-over-month increase but an 8% decline from a year earlier. Havens said 47% of current openings list a high-school diploma or less as the typical entry-level education and that nearly half require no formal training, with most of the remainder requiring short-term on-the-job training.

Phil Davis, director of workforce services for Job Service North Dakota, described the agency’s nine workforce centers and services. He said the centers serve roughly 34,100 people per month and handle about 24,100 phone inquiries. Job Service detailed its job board (more than 13,000 openings and about 204,000 active users on the platform), virtual-recruiter tools for employers, career-expo and job-fair operations and regular outreach in rural communities.

Davis and other staff reviewed federal and state programs the agency administers. Highlights included Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) and Wagner-Peyser employment services (Job Service reported 484 adults served through WIOA-funded adult programs and 2,565 participants in Wagner-Peyser services in the last reported year), an active veterans employment program (388 participants), and state-contracted programs that include Basic Employment Skills Training, the parental-responsibility “PRIDE” program for child-support recipients, and new Americans resettlement employment programs. Davis described a variety of support services designed to remove barriers to employment, including for individuals with substance-use histories or criminal convictions.

The committee heard detailed results from the state’s justice-involved job-placement pilot (JP3), a two-year program started with a $640,000 general-fund allocation to connect soon-to-be-released and recently released people with in-demand jobs. Job Service reported 297 referrals from the Department of Corrections, 213 intakes, 86 active participants and a reported employment rate for program participants of roughly 82%; staff said the program’s outcomes far exceed average quarterly earnings for nonparticipants who do not complete services.

Job Service also reviewed foreign-labor activity under H-2A (agricultural workers) and H-2B (nonagricultural temporary workers). The agency said it processed 1,315 H-2A applications, performed 1,910 housing inspections, drove roughly 91,000 miles for inspections and facilitated placement of 4,321 foreign agricultural workers in the most recent program year; across fiscal years 2021–2024 Job Service said it placed 13,332 H-2A workers.

Job Service representatives and the committee also discussed apprenticeship promotion, outreach to universities and technical schools for recruitment and retention, career-technical events and K–14 engagement, and employer education about hiring justice-involved candidates. Agency staff asked the committee to note a pending budget request (Senate Bill 2016) that would add one full-time employee to support H-2A workload. Job Service offered to provide the committee with the slideshow and webinar materials shown during the presentation.

The committee asked multiple clarifying questions about data sources, program scope and whether JP3 includes people released from county jails; Job Service said JP3 currently focuses on residents released from state correctional facilities but that the agency provides other reemployment services for county- or city-level releases. Job Service and committee members also exchanged requests for the agency’s interactive dashboards and job-board metrics for local review.