Assessment Reveals Barriers to Work in Valley

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – A community needs assessment confirms what businesses and unions have long believed about the barriers that keep many Mahoning Valley residents from working.

Now begins the effort to solve those obstacles.

Youngstown Area Goodwill Industries, in partnership with the Youngstown/Warren Regional Chamber, conducted a community needs assessment several months ago.

The results of the needs assessment were released at the Chamber’s Community Policy Meeting Friday morning at The Grand Resort Ballroom in Howland.

“I think the report shows, in fact, a lot of barriers—from childcare, transportation, behavior, health issues, financial literacy issues. There are many obstacles,” said Guy Coviello, president of the Regional Chamber and CEO.

The review found transportation, child care, mental health and drug testing/substance abuse as the top workforce development challenges. Housing is another obstacle, and the Chamber and the Eastgate Regional Council of Governments plan to publish a housing plan early next year.

“We really expected transportation, housing and childcare to come first, but mental health and substance abuse – it wasn’t a surprise – but knowing it’s a huge need out there there,” said Shelley Murray, CEO. of Youngstown Area Goodwill Industries.

Both employers and job seekers have identified those as job challenges, he said.

“Of course, another area – and it’s a small population – but it’s our young people who are at risk,” Murray said.

There are about 1,300 people aged 16 to 19 who are out of school, do not have a high school diploma and are unemployed.

“It sounds like a small amount now, but if we start to realize that over the years, and that builds up, we get to the point where we see the need in society now, with poverty and lack of skills and people who are not work well.” he said. It all builds on each other to create the situation we have now that we are trying to overcome.

The chamber has a staff member who will focus on creating the plan, and Goodwill plans to hire someone to do that work.

“We’re going to create those strategies, bring together experts that can help us successfully overcome those obstacles,” Coviello said.

Cooperation

By bringing businesses and service providers together, each can learn how others are dealing with the needs of their employees to help solve barriers, he said.

“There’s going to have to be a lot of integrated collaboration around each of these different areas,” Coviello said.

Giving an example of financial literacy, he said he hears from employers about good employees who one day stop coming to work.

“And when they dug into it a few days later, they found out that the car was broken,” Coviello said. There was no money to pay for the car to be repaired, so they stopped coming to work. Some of our employers have put things in place just to pay the bill, and my response was, well, wait a minute, let’s take it a step further, and our partners… let’s give financial literacy just to pay off the debt, but maybe you need some financial education here.”

That would help prevent similar situations from recurring.

The Youngstown Foundation is providing funding for this work, and funding agreements with other organizations are being finalized.

“Goodwill Industries is an important workforce development partner for us and professionals in this field,” Coviello said. They commissioned the study and made sure we got all the information we needed to see how we could get people out of work. And for a room with thousands of members who are struggling to find staff, this is the perfect solution. ”

The assessment showed that the participation rate of workers in the Valley is 57%. The national and individual country averages stand at 63%.

“That 6% difference represents about 20,000 potential workers, and we have about 12,000 job opportunities,” he said. “So even if we can get half of the 20,000 out of the workforce and into jobs, we’re taking a lot of pressure off the labor market for our employers, and we can really help turn this economy around faster than it already is.” you are changing.”

The next step is to identify businesses and organizations to provide knowledge to help individuals overcome these obstacles and bring employers to the table, Coviello explained.

Strategic Objective

Murray said Goodwill started this year with a strategic goal of creating a community needs assessment.

“We started inviting the public in and just talking to them, showing them what Goodwill does, asking them what needs they see and feel,” he said. “And we started hearing a lot of the same things, and to be honest, they were bigger than what the charity wanted to fill in the gaps – things like transportation, child care.”

Murray invited Coviello to see the buildings, and told him what he had been hearing from the townspeople. He was hearing about the same problems.

“I explained that we are focused on doing an assessment of the community’s needs, and at that time it was only for the benefit of Goodwill, to see how many gaps there are where we can help,” he said. “And by talking to Guy, he’s like, listen, the whole community can use this. So we said, ‘Let’s do what we can to help the community.’

The assessment included data compiled by Goodwill International, surveys, focus groups and interviews with people experiencing employment problems.

The assessment and collaboration with the chamber to develop a plan to help overcome barriers is consistent with Goodwill’s mission and history of working with and advocating for people in underserved areas, Murray said.

“Now that we’re looking at the unemployment rate, who better than Goodwill and other organizations to partner with to help them overcome these barriers and create the solutions that are needed. people should work,” he said.

Pictured above: Shelley Murray, CEO of Youngstown Area Goodwill Industries, and Guy Coviello, president and CEO of the Youngstown/Warren Regional Chamber.

Copyright 2024 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.