Skills for Chicagoland’s Future (SCF)—a public-private partnership working to close the skills gap in Chicago and Cook County by helping to match businesses that have current, unmet hiring needs with qualified, unemployed job seekers—was showcased on January 31, 2014 at a White House summit focused on strategies to reduce long-term unemployment
Skills for Chicagoland’s Future President and CEO Marie Trzupek Lynch was a featured panelist at the summit and discussed initiatives to help serve the more than 230,000 unemployed job seekers in Cook County, including a unique partnership with the Chicago Department of Aviation and O’Hare International Airport. Additionally, Lynch announced a new two-year $600,000 grant from JPMorgan Chase’s landmark New Skills at Work program to help close the skills gap in cities across the globe. The grant will support the expansion of SCF’s work, helping the organization achieve its goal of placing approximately 700 unemployed Chicago and Cook County residents into jobs in 2014, with a special emphasis on serving the long-term unemployed.
A signature initiative of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, SCF was created to close the workforce skills gap, drive business growth and move the unemployed of Chicago and Cook County into open positions by directly responding to the hiring needs of employers. SCF partners with Chicago-area employers to identify their unmet hiring needs and obtain from them commitments to hire unemployed job seekers through SCF’s services. SCF provides recruitment, placement and training services at no cost to the job seeker.
Since its launch in September 2012, Skills for Chicagoland’s Future has placed more than 600 unemployed Cook County residents into positions with more than 25 companies, making it one of the only nonprofits in the nation to secure annual commitments from employers to hire unemployed job seekers.
In conjunction with the White House summit, SCF board members from McDonald’s, Motorola Solutions, Northern Trust, The Seaton Companies and Walgreens took part in the summit and a meeting with President Barack Obama, Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker, Secretary of Labor Tom Perez and other CEOs from across the country to discuss long-term unemployment and how the federal government can work with the business community to address this issue.
Approximately 75 percent of the job seekers who found employment through SCF were among the “long-term unemployed,” having been out of work for six months or longer.
One of those individuals, Gregory Merrity, a successfully placed job seeker by SCF who is now employed at GoHealth, attended the summit at the invitation of the White House.
“Skills for Chicagoland’s Future has demonstrated that demand-driven employment strategies deliver real benefits to businesses, unemployed job seekers and the local economy,” said Lynch. “Our increased support from JPMorgan Chase and new partnership with the Chicago Department of Aviation will help us to increase the number of unemployed job seekers we serve in 2014 by more than 20 percent. We are grateful to our government funders and to the business community for their commitments to get unemployed Chicago and Cook County residents back to work.”
In 2014, SCF will expand its model practice of obtaining annual signed commitments from a multitude of employers to hire the unemployed. Companies who have already made commitments to SCF this year include Assisted Living, CDW, Ceannate Corp., GoHealth, HMSHost, Hudson Group, McDonald’s, The Seaton Companies, Rush University Medical Center, Ulta and United Airlines.
For organizations or businesses across the country that have an interest in partnering with or replicating a demand-driven workforce model in their communities, SCF also announced today its launch of a new web portal (http://demanddrivenpartnerships.com) that includes case study examples of successful partnerships and a list of opportunities for employers to address long-term unemployment.
“It is essential that the public and private sectors work together to drive business growth and close the workforce skills gap,” said Mayor Emanuel. “Skills for Chicagoland’s Future plays a crucial role in ensuring this collaboration happens in Chicago through its innovative demand-driven approach that is putting the thousands of quality unemployed job seekers in our city back to work. I encourage cities across the country to consider adopting this model as a way to effectively address long-term unemployment and spur local economic development.”
About Skills for Chicagoland’s Future
Skills for Chicagoland’s Future identifies companies’ immediate hiring needs and connects them with qualified, unemployed job seekers and/or the resources necessary to fund training programs to equip job seekers with the skills to fill those positions. SCF is chaired by Glenn Tilton, chairman of the Midwest for JPMorgan Chase, and governed by a board of directors comprised of 20 CEOs and CHROs from Chicago-area corporations. The public-private partnership is funded by the City of Chicago and the Chicago Cook Workforce Partnership, as well as a wide range of foundations and corporations, including significant funding from The Searle Funds at The Chicago Community Trust, The Joyce Foundation, JPMorgan Chase Foundation, Polk Bros Foundation, Pritzker Traubert Family Foundation and Motorola Foundation. For more information, visit www.skillsforchicagolandsfuture.com
