How can communities increase employment access & opportunities?

A growing body of research underscores that the vitality of a region’s economy depends in part on its ability to connect their residents to good jobs and firms to workers with the appropriate skill set. In order to increase access to employment opportunities, communities should focus on three overarching objectives:

Bringing Jobs to People

Prioritizing established and emerging firms and industry clusters, and investing in the ecosystems of innovation, trade, talent, infrastructure, and governance in order to both support big global firms and enable small businesses to grow in the market. Furthermore, targeting investment in job hubs throughout the state, particularly those closer to where concentrations of people live or those that leverage existing infrastructure and transportation assets can be a big step toward bringing in more employment opportunities. Job hubs are defined as areas with lots of available jobs and multiple employers that sell goods and services outside of the region. According to City Lab, a key aspect of the job hub concept is that communities should strive for a cluster of business activity–as opposed to hosting a single large employer.

Job hubs are usually attractive to different kinds of businesses, like the University Circle job hub in Cleveland, which is home to University Hospitals, the Cleveland Clinic, and multiple biomedical companies. Many city planners and economic development organizations across Ohio are embracing job hubs as a way implement a successful long-term investment strategy. Peter Truog, writing in City Lab, goes on to say “Investing in job hubs has the potential to ensure that our future economy is more connected, more concentrated, and less divided, giving workers and businesses across the Heartland a comeback to truly believe in.”

Bringing People to Jobs

In many areas of Ohio, we’re using more land today than two decades ago, but we’ve had no net increase in population or jobs. The result? Jobs are locating farther and farther away from where people live. A recent briefing paper from the Fund for our Economic Future, an alliance of Northeast Ohio funders dedicated to advancing growth and opportunity, points to the need for local and regional civic, business leaders and policymakers to focus on issues of spatial access to jobs.

The daily commute is more than just a journey to work: it also represents the opportunities a person can access. Longer commute distances have been found to negatively impact the economic mobility of low-income households from one generation to the next, a finding that resonates here in Ohio, which has among some of the lowest upward-mobility rates in the country.

Communities should be supporting increased investment in public transit, and pioneering public/private innovation in worker mobility through emerging transportation models (Uber, Chariot, Lyft, and others) that increase access to job hubs.

Addressing Social Barriers to Employment Opportunities

In order for communities to develop strategies that address social barriers to employment, it is important to first identify what they are. Depending on the community, those barriers can include people trying to re-enter the workforce but have a long-term receipt of welfare, little to no work history, low educational attainment, mental illness, chronic health problems, learning disabilities, and more.

Employment lies at the core of an individual’s’ perception and experience of income security versus economic vulnerability; social participation versus social exclusion; human dignity versus exploitation. Even if you are someone who is not barred from employment opportunities because of any of these barriers, unequal access to opportunity is still associated with poorer economic performance and higher levels of instability, and thus, affects everyone in the community.

When developing a program to help address this issue, basic understanding of barriers, their prevalence, characteristics, and associated behaviors, and the amount of time needed to address them is needed. It is also important to understand the relationship between the barrier and employment. Because individuals often face multiple barriers to employment, programs meant to address barriers have to use multiple strategies, at different intensities, to adequately meet individual needs.

To learn more about strategies to address social barriers click here for a guidance overview by the state of Ohio.

Discussion

Who is disconnected from the labor market and where do they live?

What share of the population either wants a job and cannot get one or would work more hours if they could?

What barriers to employment opportunities exist in your community?

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