BOSTON, MAY 31, 2016.....While the Massachusetts Economy is doing well, tens of thousands of people still can't find a job, because they don't have the skills to fill a good one.

And while the Massachusetts economy is doing well, hundreds of companies find their growth stunted and their opportunities being lost because they can't find the trained workers they need to fill the good jobs they've created.

Directly in the center of these major problems, at the head of the Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development, sits Ron Walker. His job is to solve them. And he's in a weird, but enviable, position - unlike most executives, if he puts his two problems together the right way, he'll go a long way towards solving both of them.

Of course, the skills gap, the shortage of workers to fill the jobs of the new economy, is so well-documented that businesses know by now to go right to Labor and Workforce Development to find the people they need, right?

"Not at all," Walker says. And he says his main goal is to be the secretary who finally breaks through to the business community, who normalizes the idea that the government workforce system is among the first places to look to find good people.

Walker's instincts, long since instilled, are to look at his constituencies as customers, and build business models to try to serve their needs. That's what he knows how to do. This is his first job in the public sector, after a long Career in banking: customer service and corporate lending.

As Secretary of Labor, Walker sits on top of a potential powerhouse set of resources. The unemployment system and job training Centers - 32 Career Centers around the state - are largely federally funded and operate under federal oversight, but Walker's people manage them.

There are federal programs, state programs, regional programs. Acronyms abound. Walker and his team are always searching to see who's most deserving, or newly deserving, of a share of the large, varied pots of money.

Most of the programs and offices and grants and forms and initiatives ultimately come down to two main missions - help people find jobs, and help jobs find people.

That second part is the one that caught Walker's eye when he systematically studied the organization he took over, and then got into the field. "I went out and talked to a ton of businesses very early on. Their orders are going up, but the workforce skills they need to be successful have changed dramatically. Manufacturing is now precision manufacturing. It's not the previous technology.

"And as we go out and talk to businesses around the Commonwealth, they'll say, 'I don't know what the career centers do, what impact they will have.' And yet, if you look at the numbers and performance of the career centers, they're very good at what it is they do" - find jobs for the unemployed or about-to-be unemployed.

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