(1) The department shall document clusters of companies throughout the state that have comparative competitive advantage or the potential for comparative competitive advantage, using the process and criteria for identifying strategic clusters developed by the working group specified in subsection (2) of this section.

(2) The department and the workforce training and education coordinating board shall jointly convene a working group to:

(a) Specify the process and criteria for identification of substate geographic concentrations of firms or employment in an industry and the industry's customers, suppliers, supporting businesses, and institutions, which process will include the use of labor market information from the employment security department and local labor markets; and

(b) Establish criteria for identifying strategic clusters which are important to economic prosperity in the state, considering cluster size, growth rate, and wage levels among other factors.

Effective date—2012 c 229 ss 101, 117, 401, 402, 501 through 594, 601 through 609, 701 through 708, 801 through 821, 902, and 904: See note following RCW 28B.77.005.