Greater Dubuque Development Corporation, in partnership with Northeast Iowa Community College (NICC), has released the 2025 Skills Gap Analysis, an annual report designed to better understand the relationship between regional workforce demand and the educational pipeline preparing workers to fill those roles. The analysis examines projected job openings, educational completions, demographic trends, and labor force data across the seven-county Greater Dubuque region to help employers, educators, workforce organizations, and community leaders make informed workforce development decisions.
Produced annually since 2014, the report compares occupational demand data with post-secondary completions from regional post-secondary training programs, colleges, and universities to identify occupations where workforce demand outpaces the current talent supply. The report also serves as a guide for shaping collaborative workforce initiatives and aligning regional training and talent attraction efforts with industry needs.
This year’s analysis highlights continued projected growth in industries such as healthcare, manufacturing, transportation and warehousing, while also identifying ongoing demographic challenges impacting workforce availability. Key findings point to an aging workforce, increasing retirements, and a projected decline in the region’s working-age population over the next decade. At the same time, many of the region’s largest skills gaps continue to appear in occupations that serve as entry points into high-demand industries, reinforcing the importance of career exposure, training pathways, retention efforts, and talent attraction strategies.
The report also emphasizes the growing importance of retaining younger workers and college students within the region, while encouraging continued collaboration between employers, educators, workforce partners, and community organizations to strengthen the regional talent pipeline.
The full 2025 Skills Gap Analysis is available for download.
For more information about the 2025 Skills Gap Analysis, contact Nic Hockenberry, Director of Workforce Programming, at 563-557-9049 or nicolash@greaterdubuque.org.