Employment Research and Planning Director

Most days tend to involve a blend of research oversight, stakeholder engagement, and policy work — meetings with state or federal agency partners, employer and industry leaders, and the research team. You'll often spend part of the time on the technical work — methodology, data quality, and analytical interpretation — and part on translating findings for audiences that range from technical to political.

The hardest part is often operating across audiences with different definitions of usable research — academics want rigor, agencies want timeliness, employers want practical implications, advocates want defensibility. You'll typically navigate the political dimensions of labor market work, where findings can affect funding decisions and policy debates.

People who tend to thrive here are analytically rigorous, policy-literate, and skilled at translating research across audiences. The trade-off is the cyclical demands of fiscal cycles, legislative sessions, and reporting deadlines. If you find satisfaction in producing the research that shapes how a region or sector thinks about its workforce, this role can carry quiet, real influence on policy.