Kenan Insights, institute-affiliated thought leaders translate recent academic research findings into actionable takeaways for business and policy. To speak with one of our experts, please contact External Affairs Assistant Director Rob Knapp.
Rural districts face persistent challenges recruiting and retaining teachers. We examine teacher housing efforts in three North Carolina counties and identify practical lessons for other communities considering similar efforts.
What is commonly referred to as “loyalty” between employers and employees has eroded for decades. Does the weakening of implied contracts mean that work has become more transactional?
An emphasis on access (and the lack thereof) provides a constructive framing of inequality’s principal factor and upward mobility’s primary roadblock.
The Kenan Institute has developed a housing affordability index for North Carolina counties. The index and accompanying interactive map allow users to compare current county-level affordability metrics and see how these measures have changed over time.
Our 2026 Grand Challenge will investigate the changing nature of the mutual commitment that once anchored work. Discover the three key questions we’ll use to guide this year-long exploration.
Forecasting gross domestic product is a challenging practice, but because GDP can reveal so much about the growth of a local economy, forecasts are an important guide in making policy and business decisions.
Officials at North Carolina State University’s Shelton Leadership Center offer thoughts on how close the leadership gap by better preparing young employees to lead themselves, others and their organizations.
Recent Kenan Institute research based on interviews across the state highlights the successes and remaining barriers that North Carolina community colleges face in recruiting and retaining students as the labor market continues to evolve.
North Carolina’s growing skills gap reflects a national challenge, but the state’s robust job market is creating high-paying opportunities for skilled workers. We talked to four experts about how to successfully scale the state’s apprenticeship and training efforts.
Public education and small business anchor institutions recover slowly after disasters, as observed in Western North Carolina’s continuing recovery from Hurricane Helene. One organization offers a lesson on the benefits of getting funding to these sectors faster.
We estimate that industries producing in-demand minerals could generate hundreds of millions of dollars in additional tax revenue for North Carolina and its communities by the end of the decade.
The literature on cross-sector collaboration and cross-sector partnership has grown within disciplinary silos, but new literature reflects a growing recognition that siloed efforts no longer match the scale of workforce challenges such as the skills gap.
North Carolina adopted its County Tiers System to direct economic support toward struggling counties. An examination shows the nearly 40-year-old system is increasingly misaligned with both economic reality and stakeholder needs.
In an age of constant information overload, Professor Melissa Geil explores why deep listening is vanishing from the workplace and how that’s quietly undermining communication, trust and innovation.
New business formation fuels local growth in North Carolina and offers real-time data to guide policy and forecasting, according to new research from the Kenan Institute, the North Carolina Collaboratory, and the Secretary of State.
We update an August 2023 piece in which we explain why manufacturing remains essential for economic growth and how manufacturing in the US today incorporates both regional shifts and “stickiness” in traditional strongholds.
The AI transformation has yet to happen, prompting uncertainty about potential impacts on the skills gap and the nature of work. Recognizing this will help us develop strategies for mitigating potential risks to workers, firms and the economy.
Our 2025 Grand Challenge examines the skills gap — the difference between the skills that employers seek and those that workers possess — which is being driven by technological breakthroughs, demographic changes and cultural shifts in the workplace.
The destruction that Hurricane Helene brought to Western North Carolina in September, followed by this month’s wildfires in Southern California, illustrates the financial risk that increasingly unpredictable weather can pose to homeowners and the insurance system.
What do we mean when we talk about “inequality”? There are numerous ways to measure it, each method with its relative strengths and weaknesses, and we must be clear what we mean when assessing inequality for policymaking.
2024 Distinguished Fellow Jayashankar M. Swaminathan explores how firms can build operational resilience, focusing on governance, risk management, supply chains, technology and regulatory compliance.
Distinguished Fellow Christine Moorman leverages data from The CMO Survey to uncover the view of marketplace threats and resilience strategies from the perspective of actual managers as part of our 2024 Grand Challenge.
To attract skilled talent in an evolving economic landscape, public and private sector leaders must understand the factors – economic, social and political conditions – that push and pull people and drive relocation.
More than four years since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, we examine the essential elements that build small-business resilience, emphasizing the importance of personal fortitude and intangible resources in ensuring business survival.