June 2, 2023

Spotlight: Our Employment Program

The Fry Foundation’s Employment program sees living-wage jobs and careers as key to helping Chicago families and individuals to flourish. To that end, the Foundation prioritizes funding for programs that help job seekers acquire the occupational skills and knowledge needed to compete for jobs that are important to our region’s economy.

To make effective investments, Fry Foundation staff must understand the complexities and trends in workforce development and particularly how the labor market is recovering after the volatility caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.  To that end, Fry Foundation program staff are closely monitoring local workforce developments that are likely to impact Chicago job seekers. Below are some of the workforce development efforts we are watching closely.

Local Workforce Development Efforts

Climate and Equitable Jobs Act

In September 2021, Governor Pritzker signed the Climate and Equitable Jobs Act (CEJA). CEJA is legislation that obligates state departments to implement new programs, initiatives, and directives to advance the State’s goals of transitioning to renewable energy. CEJA aims to move Illinois to 100% clean energy by 2050 through investments in renewable energy, energy efficiency initiatives, electric vehicle infrastructure, and job training programs in the renewable energy sector. The Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity (DCEO) has been given the authority to spend up to $180 million a year on workforce development activities including funds for job training programs (e.g., solar installation, electric vehicle infrastructure development). CEJA places an emphasis on equity and will fund job training programs in Black and Brown communities – communities that are often the first to suffer negative consequences of pollution but the last to reap the health and economic benefits of a clean energy future.

Why is this important? CEJA represents a significant public investment into the renewable energy sector. Workforce development organizations, including grantee partners like the Chicago Urban League and OAI, Inc., have developed small job training programs (e.g., solar installer training) but on their own, cannot meet growing employer demand for workers due to limited funding. Clean energy jobs in Illinois grew by almost 6% between 2018 and 2020. The $180 million annual investment in renewable energy workforce development activities represents an annual budget higher than the state’s largest federally funded program, the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act. It is anticipated that CEJA will spur considerable innovation among workforce development organizations as they work with employer partners to design and implement job training programs. The Foundation has been engaged in conversations with grantee partners and other key stakeholders in the renewable energy sector and we continue to monitor how these efforts impact employment opportunities in Chicago. 

Good Jobs Challenge

In August 2022, the U.S. Department of Commerce awarded the Chicago Cook Workforce Partnership a three-year Good Jobs Challenge grant of $18.5 million. The purpose of the grant is to connect job seekers to quality jobs by building and strengthening systems and partnerships – bringing together employers who have hiring needs with vocational training organizations that are training job seekers with in-demand skills that lead to good-paying jobs.

While The Chicago Cook Workforce Partnership is the grant recipient, there are many partners involved including the county, city, City Colleges of Chicago, World Business Chicago, and several of the Foundation’s grantee partners[1]. The funds will be used to strengthen partnerships between employers and vocational training organizations in four high growth sectors: healthcare; information technology; manufacturing; and transportation, distribution, and logistics. Each of the four sectors have assigned backbone organizations, or hubs, to lead and coordinate the work and each of the sectors have established racial equity goals.

Why is this important? While industry sector partnerships are not new, the level of funding and the intentionality of the Good Jobs Challenge is. The Good Jobs Challenge expands existing collaborations and is breaking down silos between large systems with an explicit focus on helping job seekers connect to careers in high growth sectors.  The Fry Foundation knows from experience that sector partnerships can be a powerful lever for advancing workforce equity because they provide a collaborative space for funders, employers, education and training providers, and workforce intermediaries to adopt a systems-change approach.  With an explicit focus on racial equity, sectoral strategies for building career pathways between entry-level jobs and high-quality occupations can help to close the good-jobs gap for workers of color, meet the emerging needs of employers, and buoy the regional economy.