CCC’s Use Data to Direct Fire Recovery Efforts

In December 2025, the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office (CCCCO) issued its ‘Compendium of Allocations and Resources,’ a roadmap of strategies that pursue the agency’s commitment to student success. Building on the established California Community College (CCC) principles of ‘Vision 2030,’ the Compendium aligns current state spending mandates with its long-term higher education goals. And, at the base of both initiatives, lies data, the fundamental element that both provides direction and guidance to activities, as well as confirmation of their success.

Data as a Policy Driver

One CCC project relying heavily on data is the CCC’s LA Fire Recovery project, launched in response to the 2025 wildfires, which uses data to inform its approach to rebuilding the region’s areas that were destroyed by the flames. The CCC relies on information gleaned by and for the Center of Excellence for Labor Market Research (COE), a research entity utilized by the Los Angeles Regional Consortium of Community Colleges (LARC) to identify and explain market forces.

For the LA Fire Recovery project, the COE pulls both labor market data and industrial information to determine which occupations are most needed and which industries they serve. The resulting Dashboard of information is now used to inform the CCCs about which programs and training strategies are, or will be, most in demand in the coming months and years, as well as the schools that are now, or will be, best suited to host those courses.

Four Steps to Workforce Growth

Perhaps the most significant aspect of the Dashboard is how it connects the demand for labor to the specific schools already training for those occupations. The process follows four steps:

• Demand and Supply – This section examines which occupations are most needed for the rebuild effort and the levels of labor supply required to meet current and growing demand. It includes going wages for these jobs, too. This data sets a baseline for decision-makers who must balance the demand for these programs with other popular courses.
• Educational Program Capacity – This section measures the number of current students enrolled in programs with the highest expected worker demand. The data is notable because it includes not just students enrolled in community colleges but also those participating in Eligible Training Provider (ETP) programs and other adult education institutions.
• Community College Program Analysis – This section examines the CCCs that already have related training programs available, the types of diplomas and degrees offered, and the courses that have the highest number of graduates. A high graduate number indicates that the program is both popular and successful for both the learner and their future employer. Programs that meet this level of success are more easily extended and replicated to quickly and effectively increase the supply of qualified workers.
• Community College Program List – This section evaluates the number and types of local fire-recovery-related programs available at the various schools. Often, courses that provide similar training modules aren’t consistently labeled across a school system. This dataset eliminates the confusion that that can create.

The organizational structure of the LA Fire Recovery Dashboard clarifies for researchers, administrators, and educators where skilled labor is in short supply, where labor demands are growing, and where training for these skilled workers is available now. The information both quantifies and qualifies funding and staffing decisions, providing critical credibility for those who are responsible for budget and financial determinations.

Deeper Dive: Step One – Demand and Supply

For many people, the concept of ‘supply and demand’ is pretty simple: it helps markets set prices by evaluating the relationship between product availability (supply) and customer intention (demand). And while that principle is evident in the CCC ‘Demand and Supply’ dashboard, the data also provides a much deeper, more specific analysis of that concept within the context of labor and occupations.

This dataset provides insights into 56 housing construction trades and occupations with a fire-related rise in demand, the types of jobs available within those sectors, and an estimate of the total number of workers needed to achieve a fully populated labor force.

The Drafting, Design, and Surveying Example …

The numbers are revealing (as of September 2025), as is evidenced by the Occupation Group for Drafting, Design, and Surveying:

• There are four listed occupations:
  • Architectural and Civil Drafters
  • Mechanical Drafters
  • Electrical and Electronics Drafters, and
  • Surveying and Mapping Technicians.
• Demand for these occupations is currently high (a total of 4,216 in these four categories), but supply is decidedly low (only 1,702) coming available through current training programs:
  • 2,765 are needed in the Architectural category, but there are only 913 listed in the ‘supply’ column;
  • The Mechanical Drafters category needs 610 workers now, with only 350 coming available.
  • There is a need for 413 Electrical drafters, but only 200 are coming available soon, and
  • There’s a gap of 188 surveyors, with a demand for 428 and a supply of only 240.

Also identified in this data is the wage range for these occupations, which can help undecided students envision their future in a specific job. Across these occupations, the entry-level average is ~$27/hour, with wage growth up to almost $42/hour for experienced workers.

And all four subcategories are experiencing an increase in demand because of the fires. While the demand for mechanical, electrical, and surveying workers rose by approximately 40% over pre-fire levels, the need for architectural drafters rose by over 58%.

… Is Mirrored by Other Occupational Groups

The other Occupation Groups show similar high demand with equally low supply:

• Heavy Equipment and Construction
  • Most notable: the demand for First-line Supervisors across the construction trades is currently 12,763, while the supply chain shows only 584 coming available any time soon.
• Helpers and Laborers
  • As of September 2025, there were NO helpers available across all trades, leaving untouched the demand for over 1,000.
• Maintenance, Repair, and Inspection
  • These jobs are also in high demand, with almost no supply of workers. Data shows a demand for over 43,000 with an expected supply of only 858.
• Mechanical, Electrical, and Systems
  • Again, there’s a dearth of supply (900) rising to meet the immense demand (26,015).
• Structural and Finishing
  • Not surprisingly, the current (9/25) supply of 74 carpenters (within the housing construction subsector) can’t come close to meeting the demand for the over 8,000 needed to rebuild all the homes lost in the fires.

The COE – LARC Dashboard is a lodestone of information for every entity invested in assuring LA’s recovery from the wildfires of 2025. Not only is it helping people find training and jobs in occupations of their choice, it also gives the CCCs the information they need to build out relevant, in-demand programs for the Rebuild and Recovery project.