Jefferson City finished in second place among rural finalists for the Federal Home Loan Bank of Des Moines' Strong Communities Award.
While the second-place finish means Jefferson City will not receive the $15,000 grand prize, it does mean $3,000 for the Jefferson City Area Chamber of Commerce's economic development program.
The chamber plans to put the $3,000 prize toward a labor availability study in 2016, said Missy Bonnot, director of economic development at the chamber.
"We feel like we have very skilled people in Cole County and that we probably have an underemployment situation, where people have the skills to be hired at a higher level than they are," Bonnot said.
"Our unemployment rate is very low right now, and that's just one of the things that we want to dive in and take a look at."
Bonnot estimated the labor availability study will cost somewhere between $15,000-$20,000 in total. In the 12 years Bonnot has been with the chamber, she knows of no labor-specific study the chamber has conducted.
"We haven't had this low unemployment in a very long time," she said. "It's been several years since we've had any study of this magnitude. The last one would be when we hired TIP Strategies to do overall economic development planning in 2010."
Cole County's unemployment rate was 3.6 percent in September, the lowest it has been for a single month since April 2008. The county's average unemployment rate for 2014 was 5 percent, the lowest since 2008, when the annual average was 4.3 percent.
Once the chamber has the results of the labor availability study, officials will determine what types of programs or training should be put in place.
The Strong Communities Award held online public voting to honor the projects, the people and the programs that promote small business growth and retention in rural and urban communities.
Jefferson City's nomination was for the community's effort to show manufacturer Continental Commercial Products that Jefferson City was the right place to open the company's new facility. The effort came after R.R. Donnelley announced in July 2013 it would close its Jefferson City location and lay off 475 employees, and Continental Commercial Products announced in April 2015 it would relocate its Bridgeton operations to the Jefferson City facility.
Hawthorn Bank, which financed the initial purchase of the former R.R. Donnelley building, submitted the initial application for the award.
First place in the contest went to Community & Economic Development Associates of Harmony, Minnesota, population 1,007, for a joint effort to expand a major manufacturing employer in the city.