Contact:
Alyssa Brown, Workforce Florida, Inc.
850.414.8301

TALLAHASSEE -- In their continuous efforts to enhance customer service for Florida's job seekers and businesses, Workforce Florida Inc. and the Agency for Workforce Innovation recently added three new tools that will provide job listings in real-time and by geographic region, and help job seekers transfer current skills into new careers.

The three new tools, designed primarily to help workforce professionals better serve job seekers and businesses, are now being used throughout the state's 24 Regional Workforce Boards and 93 One-Stop Career Centers.

"Today's quickly evolving employment and industry landscapes demand innovative solutions, and Florida's workforce system is rising to that challenge," said Chris Hart IV, president and CEO of Workforce Florida. "These new resources will enable job seekers, businesses and stakeholders to take advantage of opportunities to find a job, expand their talent pool and have a more targeted impact on the labor market in their community."

Two of the tools, Help Wanted OnLine and TORQ (the Transferable Occupation Relationship Quotient), will be managed through the Agency for Workforce Innovation's Labor Market Statistics Center.  The third, In-Context LMI, will be managed by Workforce Florida as a component of the Employ Florida Marketplace (online at EmployFlorida.com), Florida's official job-matching portal.

"These cutting-edge advances in real-time labor market information will greatly enhance our ability to respond to today's needs and prepare for tomorrow's opportunities," said Agency for Workforce Innovation Director Cynthia R. Lorenzo.  "In direct support of our ongoing commitment to helping Floridians get back to work, these tools will improve our ability to connect job seekers with new employment opportunities and help identify emerging trends that will attract and support businesses."

Details of each workforce tool include:

• Help Wanted OnLine -- Data from The Conference Board's Help Wanted OnLine provide a real-time listing of online job openings posted statewide.  The database is accessible to each of the state's 24 Regional Workforce Boards and is updated every three hours with a summary of the local hiring landscape. While previous reports listed only openings placed in newspapers and other traditional media, Help Wanted OnLine allows Florida's workforce professionals to instantly measure job vacancies and identify upcoming workforce trends. 

• TORQ -- The Transferable Occupation Relationship Quotient, known as TORQ, is a user-friendly tool that determines career opportunities based on a job seeker's current abilities, skills and knowledge. TORQ will be used to assist Florida's Regional Workforce Boards and One-Stop Career Centers to reemploy workers with transferrable skills into new jobs requiring little or no additional training.

•  EmployFlorida.com's In-Context LMI -- In-Context LMI is available directly to Florida's job seekers and businesses through the Employ Florida Marketplace, the state's official online job-matching portal.  The In-Context LMI offers data on the number of job openings in any geographic area based on job seekers' skills, wages and more-giving users quick and easy access to information about their local job market.

With more than four million registered individuals and more than 90,000 registered employers, the Employ Florida Marketplace attracts more than 105,000 unique visitors each day and lists more than two million jobs annually.

For media inquiries about Help Wanted OnLine or TORQ, contact:

The Agency for Workforce Innovation
Office of Communications
(850) 245-7130

For media inquiries about In-Context LMI, contact:

Alyssa Brown at (850) 414-8301

Or go to: EmployFlorida.com and click on "Labor Market Information" under the Resources tab.