Governor Eric Holcomb is seeking input from leaders of a few large Indiana companies as part of his efforts to improve workforce development.
Holcomb met with officials from Cook Medical, Catalent and NSWC Crane at a roundtable Friday in Bedford.
The companies are collaborating with Regional Opportunity Initiative, or ROI, to advance economic and community prosperity in 11 Southwest Central Indiana counties.
Holcomb says a common theme he hears is how many companies are looking to increase their workforce in the near future.
"We've got about 85,000 unfilled jobs right now all across the state of Indiana. That's an understatement or an estimate in the terms of vacancies that need to be occupied," Holcomb says.
Officials from Ivy Tech, Vincennes University and Brown County Schools also joined the conversation
They say the ROI partnership allows students to engage with large manufacturing companies in the area. Holcomb says these partnerships are instrumental to increasing Indiana's workforce.
"We're hearing the critically important role that schools k-12 and postsecondary education, and training and retraining ... all of this it's a roundtable effort where we're all coming together saying ‘how do we solve this problem,'" he says.
Holcomb says Southwest Central Indiana is setting an example on how to grow workforce development.