Okay. Awesome. Ms. Sheila Ireland, I know the work that you've done. You've advised them in a variety of different initiatives and still continue to inspire me around this particular type of work. But something you talked about really, really stuck out and talked about making sure the employer as part of the design on how we come up with the strategy. Can you elaborate on that? Because often times we come to the table and say, hey, yeah, this is what we think it should look like, but can you elaborate on that more please?
Yeah. It's the difference between this idea of -- I'll give you an example. Do you remember that moment in time where if we taught everyone coding, we would have no 22 more unemployment issues, right. And that was not informed by who was hiring, what the job requirements were, what the dosage of workforce would be required for people to actually be successful in those programs. Without really starting at the beginning, right, which has been our strategy from the beginning, is you don't understand exactly what you're doing or why, and then you're trying to force an employer to take someone who does not meet their needs. You know, even -- I'm not stealing thunder. But even back in the Skills Initiative days when we did certified medical assistance, it is a different job at CHOP, it is a different job at Penn, it is a different job at Temple. And so, without doing that kind of employer-needs assessment where you understand not just the skill set that is required, right, but the cultural and behavioral context for success in those organizations, you fail the people that you serve. And so, when we say employer-driven, we mean, yes, we do understand what specific set of skills that you would like for them to be able to have, but will you fit here is just as important.
I know I did a tour of your site. And y'all had like PECO there and the young people were doing the --
-- the training academy, right. And so, how many programs does your organization work with in terms of public-private partnerships for training, how many?
So the bigger ones are obviously the Convention Center. So they've been our partner for almost 35 years. PECO's been our partner for the last nine years as well. There's a number of employer partners, Solar States, etc., across every discipline. There are standing partnerships across green jobs, health care, IT, etc.
Did you bring the thought process regarding the design approach with the employer to OIC or that was something that they were doing prior to you coming?
No. You know, there's a lot of what we call train and pray going on.
Oh, train and pray. Oh, okay. Got you. Understood.
We train and we pray that they get a job. And I have to say OIC wasn't very different, you know, when I entered into the door. I think there's a couple of things that go on, I think, that drive it, right. One, you need the sophistication to be able to build bespoke curriculum to answer the employers call. If you do not have that capacity or ability inhouse, it's very different, it's very difficult to shift to what the employer needs in some way. So you have to have an organization that understands instructional design facilitation, how to build programming as opposed to one-and-done, right. So it's just like you're a snappy dresser, President Johnson. It's just like, you know, having a bespoke suit, right. It might be the same material, but it looks and it feels and operates very differently for you.
Okay. All right. That's all I have at this moment, Mr. Chair.
Good afternoon to both of you. It's a pleasure to see you. Congratulations on your new position, Sarah, and congrats to both of you on all your success. I think the West Philadelphia Skills Initiative will forever be my favorite workforce program. I think it's one of the best in the country. I will forever claim giving you guys your first grant when I was a program officer at LISC and have been just so impressed by what you do. And, Sheila, you were the architect of that, right, way back when. And so, there's a lot of expertise at this table. I want to ask you, how can we share the critical learnings that both of you have experienced in your time in setting up successful workforce development initiatives and how can we infuse them, you know, among the rest of our programs here in the City of Philadelphia? And then secondly, I've struggled for a while to understand how we scale this model with more emerging industries. I know that the Iovance program, for example, is fantastic, but I have been really focused on how we bottle this particularly -- I mean, I think we're in a moment in time with life sciences and biotech. I hope that it's going to come back. And I know that the core of that is in my District and the Council President's District. How do we capitalize on what you've learned to take this to more emerging and growing industries?
I'll start with this scale idea first. One of the more sobering statistics I think that we've seen in the business community, if you think about how Corporate America used to invest in professional development or employee development, the thing that comes to mind is if you remember the company man from GM, right. So if you were lucky, you got into the GM training program and you left before you died, but you stayed there 40 years and GM prepared you for subsequent ranks in there. We don't see that type of investment anymore in organizations, right. We don't see that type of corporate investment in it. I can't speak to how the Skills Initiative is funded now, but the majority of our funding does not come from Corporate America. So we have a client with no skin in the game except what we can produce for them in some way. And for years I think it's been enough, you know. But that type of if we are helping you build your business, is that not a viable function to pay for in some ways. And I think sometimes that kind of gap between corporate philanthropy and the work that they would like to be seen done in workforce is a gap.
Yeah. I think scale for us we are committed to maintaining our outcomes. So if we grow too quickly, then those quality outcomes, we put them at risk. So we are growing every year. I would say that our path to growth involves these innovation hubs, these places where we have concentrated jobs where we want to begin to work more and more. And then also industry partnerships, we've pulled together two industry partnerships, one in health care and one in life sciences. The idea being that employers are sharing their needs as a group, and then you can take what the Skills Initiative does, which right now is one employer, one training program. Folks get jobs and learn about the needs of many employers at once and hopefully be able to design programs at scale, shared curriculum, all the things that take this up a level. And it's not just the Skills Initiative that should benefit from those industry partnerships. The idea is that we develop an understanding for what employers need using the skills that we have around employer engagement, but then we share those with other workforce providers so they are able to do more training and increase the number of folks who are connecting to jobs. We think that's part of our responsibility.
And, Councilwoman, is the question scale or is it effectiveness? See, we say scale a lot, right.
How do we scale this effective strategy? It's both.
I always, you know, so part of why my remarks were focused on systems is that we do see failures. You get on round 1 and you don't proceed. And one of the things that we are going to be testing out later this year is this idea of how if because we have the physical location and can do that, if we can bring the services that people need to them, right, can we effectively increase the stickiness of what we do, right. And so, I would say without the numbers in my head that if we improved our outcomes 30% and people were sticking, stayed and moved, right, a lot of the issue that you're trying to address with scale would be addressed.
Thank you so much. And just a quick follow-up. Since you mentioned the industry partnership model as a way that we grow and get a better sense of what employers in emerging industries need, how's that going? How's the life sciences industry partnership going?
It's going well. I think you referenced the capital challenges in that environment, so we're feeling those. The needs of industry have shifted slightly and they're now focused on I think executive leadership more than frontline workers. And that means we still see it as an economic development play. We're supporting them with career exposure for young people and still building a shared curriculum. But I would say that the hiring needs are not immediately there for life sciences at the scale that they were even two years ago for us. We continue to do programs, but not the same number of programs that we did previously.
Thank you. Thanks so much to both of you. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Councilmember. Chair recognizes Councilmember Young.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. When you both mentioned that the employers design a program, this is very important. One of the most successful programs I've seen is at Community College of Philadelphia where Toyota is teaching those students how to fix Toyotas. And then you get a job with Toyota as soon as you finish, right. So for a young person, you can say when I finish this program, I got a job making 70 grand a year. So I think we have to -- and it's a great example. But when we have different competition for different industries in our area, particularly for the biopharmaceutical industry, how can we -- they may have different processes and techniques. But how can we in general use those competitive companies to help us with a shared curriculum essentially is what the question I'm getting at? Because, yes, they all have an advantage of they want to be able to train their people to do their stuff. But there's a need industry-wide for people in our city. So what incentives can we provide them to help you all with that shared curriculum?
They're in. I don't think we need to take additional steps to incentivize them to participate. That is one of the core priorities of an industry partnership. The idea that more people can go through training that's been vetted by these employers when they are ready to hire folks at a higher scale. So I think the devil's in the details, right, but the agreement is that we would partner with some of the community colleges to develop a shared curriculum specifically for biomanufacturing.
Yeah. I mean, like I said CCP is already doing it. They're already doing manufacturing there. It'll be a great place to park some of these industry-specific curriculum. So however we can be supportive of that, I think that my colleagues and I would really love those programs because they actually work. Another question I have, Ms. Ireland, I just went to a graduation for some of your students with the computer programming for Scholas. Those folks already had jobs. A lot of them had jobs before the program was even over, because that's a skill set that that's just a need. So how can we as a city begin to help you identify those types of jobs where there's such a demand that once you get that skill, once you get that programming, the job opportunities are going to be particularly endless? So what are those industries you're seeing now outside of -- I mean, of course it's the tech industry, right. Those folks have jobs. But what other emergency industries should we as a Council be paying attention to, to get our young people prepared for that?
I mean, I think you're aware of a lot of it. Maritime obviously is a huge opportunity for Philadelphia as well. Advanced manufacturing is something that is returning to the city that we would love to see more of here. We are always talking about skilled trades. We've been talking about skilled trades forever. But regardless of the union conversation, it is still the most in-demand skill needed globally, not just Philadelphia, not just Pennsylvania, not just America, but globally. And so, when we have those opportunities to expand pathways into those industries, your help would be greatly appreciated.
Yeah. I think I'm looking here -- and Pew is going to testify. I'm looking at their data that says that in these middle-wage jobs in Philadelphia, only 7% of Black people are in construction, right. So that's a whole different conversation. But if this is a majority-minority city, you know, only 7% of the population is involved in a particular industry, how do we expect to really grow our city with those type of numbers? So I just want to thank you for that.
And I would add, we see tremendous opportunity in health care. I think that we take health care for granted sometimes in this city, but really the variety of roles available in health care and the clear career pathways that exist are a really solid entry point for workforce development organization that's seeking to connect residents to jobs. That has been our bread and butter for a long time. We could do that full time. That is how heavy the demand is. It could just be health care for two major employers, and that could be all the skills initiative was because that's how significant the demand is.
Thank you. Thank you for the questions. Councilmember Gilmore Richardson.
Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. And I had to quickly say thank you to the both of you. Sheila Ireland, early in my career you have been such an expert in this work and I appreciate all the work that you have done, not only to help us as a Council, but to help me as a member of Council who decided to focus on workforce development. And, Sarah, we worked together for a very long time. Councilmember Gauthier talked about you all bottling up this expertise to help others in the industry prepare folks for opportunities in a variety of industries, right, in health care and in other areas. And I was actually just at one of the Pew briefings, and Rashawn and I were talking about the Skills Initiative. I mentioned it while we were speaking because you all do such a wonderful job with high placement rates around career opportunities with high wages, obviously the work in West Philadelphia, but with the expansion of the work as well. So if you all could just share data on the demographics of your participants, how you find your participants and how you achieve such high placement rates? And I think it's important, I think Sheila pointed this out, that when you create a program, you have to have an enduser. We talked about always having an enduser at the Pew briefing. And so, if you could just speak to how you all are able to achieve such high rates of participation and thus, high rates of employment and wages at the end of the opportunity? And then, Sheila, if you could talk about any lessons you've learned over your time working in this field that you can share with us about programs that are created and how you create lasting impact?
I can start with the participant demographics for the Skills Initiative. Now, since the expansion we do have folks from every corner of the city who are participating in the Skills Initiative. But because of our home base, about half of our lifetime participants are from West Philadelphia. They've ranged in age from 18 all the whole way up to 70. But the average age for us is around 32 years of age. It is more likely that people who identify as women will be moving through the Skills Initiative program. 65% of our participants are women and somewhere in the range of 4% hold Bachelor's degrees. And I mentioned that because I think that there is -- the Skills Initiative occupies a very particular niche, people who are close to connecting to that employment opportunity, but need the access and the additional professional development. But that doesn't mean that everybody who moves through the Skills Initiative has a Bachelor's degree. We are training Philadelphians with GEs, high school equivalency to move through the program. In terms of the outcomes, I think you're going to hear the same thing from Sheila that you're going to hear from me, and I'm going to come back to employer engagement, employer engagement, employer engagement. It's demand-driven model. And then you customize according to those needs to make these folks indispensable to the workplaces that they're eventually going to enter. I also think, and I know this is butts up against scale. But I think that the high touch nature of our program is part of the reason for its success. And it was designed that way from the beginning, and it continues to be. So meaning that folks are very much in touch with staff, getting the support they need for some of the barriers that were named in the earlier panel today. So I think those are probably the two primary things. And given the opportunity, I would say that employer engagement is the thing that I identify, probably Sheila identifies, as the most important thing. It is the most impossible thing to get funded, either from a philanthropic perspective or from a public dollars perspective. No one is paying for the six months that it takes to truly understand the workplace and to cultivate an employer. And Councilmember Gauthier asked, well, why aren't these practices more widely used. And it's because we had a lot of flexible funding at the beginning of the Skills Initiative that allowed us to do employer engagement. But for other organizations that might want to move in this direction in time, their financial models might not sustain it. So I think that's something worth mentioning.
And I'll add to Sarah's glory here. I will say in the beginning of the Skills Initiative we took no public funding because there was not enough flexibility to enact the strategy that we wanted to do. People didn't want to fund stipends and didn't want to fund various aspects of the program. But once we honed in and said, this is what works, we had to raise dollars separate and distinct from revenue streams that might be more lucrative for us to be able to do that. Would you say that's fair?
Yeah, I think that's fair. And when I was the Executive Director, we introduced public funding with the support of Philadelphia Works to support the cost of credentials, which is one of the lanes that Pat's funding does allow for. So braiding funding has let us go farther.
So lessons learned, they are a myriad, right. I guess -- so my testimony today was focused on systems because that's where the journey has taken me to this particular point in time. I think we understand intimately workforce and how to get people into work. That's no 11 question around it. But after I landed at OIC in North Philadelphia, I'm trying to figure out how am I changing the trajectory of a community. And that is bigger than just getting a job, right. It's around activating what I think of as the three hubs of OIC, which is workforce development at its core, but we're also a social justice and economic empowerment engine. And so, a lot of the work that you will see coming out of OIC, and this year in particular, is around economic empowerment and opportunity, leveraging our physical infrastructure to be able to provide service in different ways, aggregating the six Sullivan entities on North Broad Street for collective action and the ability to give voice to the community that we serve. All of those things change the horizon that people see around what's possible for them. I wanted it to be a broader vision than just I got a job here, right. But what can you do, how can you change the trajectory of Philadelphia and leverage the specific tools that are required to move families forward. I think that's what we're trying to explore and understand and lever right now, right, with still workforce is always going to be the core of what we do. We're very proud of the work that's been done over the next 60 years. But what's the next step, what's the next evolution? Because if it was enough to just get a job, we still wouldn't be on the top ten list for poverty five years later.
Thank you so much and thank you for your testimony. Much appreciated. Mr. McMonagle, can you please read the last panel to testify.
Can we please have Katie Wolfgang, Nikki Pumphrey and Jodie Harris please. (Witnesses approached witness table.)
Katie, if you want to go first, just state your name for the record and proceed with your testimony.
Good morning, Council President Johnson, Chairperson Squilla and members of the Committee on Commerce and Economic Development. My name is Katie Wolfgang, and I'm a Senior Officer on the Philadelphia Research and Policy Initiative team at the Pew Charitable Trusts. Our work aims to inform discussion and key issues facing the city and region, and by providing policymakers with data analysis and promising practices. I am honored to be able to provide testimony at today's hearing and will focus my remarks on research that supports an approach to workforce development that is sector-focused, regional in scale and explicitly designed to grow quality jobs, jobs that provide family-sustaining wages, stability benefits and pathways to economic mobility. I've also provided for everyone on the panel a copy of all of the research that I'll reference today and I'm really looking forward to the discussion. Following our testimony in 2021, Pew published a report demonstrating that while overall employment in Philadelphia grew in the years leading up to the pandemic, the number of middle-wage jobs, so jobs that pay 20% above or below the median wage for Philadelphia, the job growth in that category remained essentially flat. That means that job growth was instead concentrated at the top and the bottom of the labor market, high-wage jobs that typically require advanced degrees and experience and low-wage jobs that leave people struggling to make ends meet. This report was concerning for two reasons. First, 64% of Philadelphians over the age of lack a four-year degree. This means that our job mix simply does not include enough jobs to help every individual living in poverty get on a path to economic mobility. Second, our research showed that residents without a degree were losing access to middle-wage jobs, even as those same jobs were being filled increasingly by workers with college credentials. Taken together, two things were clear. First, Philadelphia needs more middle-wage quality jobs that are available to residents without a four-year degree. And secondly, Philadelphians in need of those jobs must be able to access the education, training and basic needs support that are required to both compete for and succeed in those jobs. So shortly after this research was published, Pew partnered with many of the leaders and organizations here today, an incredibly great group of partners to both identify and act on a strategy that would address both of these problems. Together we engage stakeholders from the business community, nonprofits, education, and the public sector around the same question, what can we do to change the trajectory of both job growth and job access to ensure a more thriving Philadelphia. The answer was clear. We must align our efforts with how the economy actually functions. The economy operates at a regional scale and our economic and workforce development strategies must do the same. Southeastern Pennsylvania, anchored by the City of Philadelphia and spanning Bucks, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery and Philadelphia counties, accounts for 40% of Pennsylvania's economy. Our industry strengths, innovation, ecosystem and supply chains all cross county lines. Importantly, so do workers. 87% of Southeastern Pennsylvania residents work within the five county region, and nearly 4 in 10 commute to a neighboring county for their jobs. Recognizing this, Pew partnered with the Brookings Institution to conduct a comprehensive assessment of the Southeastern Pennsylvania economy and to support a coalition of workforce and economic development leaders from Philadelphia and across the region to develop a shared strategy for equitable growth.
Brookings Market Assessment, included in your packet, published in July 2025, showed that despite our extensive economic assets in the region, including a first-class eds and meds sector, Southeastern Pennsylvania underperforms peer regions on critical measures of economic growth and mobility. In particular, our region has not been effective in growing jobs in traded sectors. Those are sectors that primarily sell goods and services outside of the region. These sectors are important both because they infuse new money into the regional economy and because they tend to generate higher-paying jobs, including many that do not require a Bachelor's degree. Brookings found that if the region's traded sectors had grown at the same rate as traded sectors were growing across the country between 2013 and 2023, Southeastern Pennsylvania would have added more than 104,000 jobs. An estimated 70% of those jobs would have paid family-sustaining wages, meaning the region's underperformance in job growth directly limited access to quality employment over the past decade. Looking ahead, the market assessment has identified three opportunity sectors where the region is well-positioned to compete and to expand quality jobs. Those include enterprise digital solutions, precision manufacturing and industrial technologies and biomedical engineering and production. And while I won't go into each of those, also included in your packet is a deeper description of what each of those sectors cover. The urgency of this work is underscored in everything you've heard today and in the recent findings from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. While unemployment is historically low and median household income has risen, nearly half of Philadelphia households still earn less than the basic cost of living. When individuals in this category were asked by the Federal Reserve Bank in their study what would help them, the number one response was finding a better job. In May, the Brookings Institution will release a comprehensive, action-oriented growth strategy grounded in data collected through the market assessment and developed in close partnership with the Southeastern Pennsylvania economic and workforce development leaders. The strategy will include concrete tactics for growing sectors where the region is best-positioned to succeed. Critical to today's conversation, this strategy will highlight workforce development priorities that require sustained focus and robust public-private co-investment. Those include, number one, aligning workforce strategies and funding with realtime industry demand across the region. Number two, expanding onramps to quality jobs through high-quality training programs, credentialing and earn-and-learn models that are developed in close partnership with employers. Number three, solving for sector-specific pain points like shortages and necessary training equipment or the challenge of competing with industry for specialized instructors. Number four, creating effective bridges from basic job readiness training to advanced technical training. And number five, supporting incumbent worker training and promotion pathways, which are key to ensuring access to economic mobility to entry-level workers. I thank you for the opportunity to share this research with all of you and for the committee's interest in this important work, and I look forward to questions and conversation following my fellow panelists' testimony.
Thank you. Thank you for your testimony. If you want to state your name for the record and then proceed.
Good afternoon. My name is Nikki Pumphrey. I'm the Vice-president of Talent and Workforce Development at the Chamber of Commerce for Greater Philadelphia. Before I give my formal testimony, I just want to say we very much hear your call for action for the business community to be involved in young people and would love to discuss a little bit more during the Q&A. So my colleagues on this panel have laid out the data clearly. Katie did a great job. Philadelphia's job mix does not include enough middle skill, family-sustaining pathways for the majority of our residents. That is true. I want to focus on why that is and more specifically, what it will take to change that. We've spent decades treating this as a training problem. Philadelphia does not have a training problem. We have incredible training organizations. We just heard from two of them. We have a growth problem. Brookings research found that if our regions traded sectors had grown at merely the national average between 2013 and 2023, Southeastern Pennsylvania would have added more than 104,000 additional jobs, roughly 70% of those paying family-sustaining wages. You cannot solve a growth problem with more training programs. We know regional coordination is what is required and we know that it produces results. 1 billion in private aerospace investment, alongside measurable improvements in wages and family- sustaining jobs. In Detroit, the Detroit Regional Partnership created a single coordinated front door for business attraction, replacing the overlapping competing landscape that had defined the region and secured more than $5 billion in private investment in its first five years. It is now a national model for business- anchored regional recovery. So Philadelphia knows what civic fragmentation costs. Detroit shows us what replacing it can produce. The chamber is a central partner in the Southeastern Pennsylvania Economic Collaborative, developed with Brookings Institution and Pew Charitable Trust, aligning leaders from Philadelphia and its four collar counties around shared strategies for equitable regional growth. The three sectors at the center of this work, precision manufacturing, biomedical engineering and production and enterprise digital solutions, of which you will hear a lot about. We're not chosen arbitrarily. Brookings assessment identified them as areas where the region already had demonstrated competitive strengths, where growth potential is high and where significant share of jobs do not require a four-year degree. In enterprise digital solutions, 57% of cluster jobs are quality jobs. In biomedical engineering, that figure is 55%. And there are even more promising jobs that are in that pot. To say overall, these are not just growth sectors, these are equitable growth sectors with accessible, quality jobs that move people up the ladder of economic mobility. Precision manufacturing alone supports nearly 26,000 jobs in Southeastern Pennsylvania, with 67% of those jobs held by workers without a four-year degree. Yet there are more than 8000 annual openings in priority machining and fabrication roles, and we are producing fewer than 200 graduates per year in relevant programs. That gap reflects equipment shortages, instructor constraints and a coordination failure between employers who have jobs and training providers who want to work with them to fill them. City Council plays a really key role in shaping the environment that determines whether this work succeeds. Businesses make location and expansion decisions over multiyear horizons, and the policy environment they encounter sends direct signals about whether Philadelphia is a place where they can confidently invest, grow and create jobs. And I want to be specific about three areas where Council's decisions matter most.
In May, the Brookings Institution will release a comprehensive, action-oriented regional growth strategy developed in partnership with stakeholders across Southeastern Pennsylvania in both economic and workforce development. And that strategy will include concrete workforce priorities, aligning funding with realtime industry demand, expanding earn- and-learn models, supporting incumbent worker training. But only local leadership can create the policy conditions that make those tactics work. First, a predictable, supportive regulatory environment. When permitting is unpredictable or burdensome, that signals risk. When it is streamlined and business-friendly, it signals confidence. Council's decisions on these fronts directly shape whether firms see Philadelphia as a place to grow. Second, demand-driven workforce investment. I think Sarah and Sheila could not have driven that home enough, but I'm happy to keep driving at home that the region currently lacks a consistent mechanism for translating what employers actually need into what training systems produce. And we're starting to do that through industry partnerships. But that level of coordination needs to happen at scale. Employers tell us they need machinists, welders, lab technicians, enterprise software specialists. Yet training dollars often flow through program categories that don't reflect that reality necessarily. The result is credentialing without jobs. So connecting to employers first is absolutely essential. Council can reinforce this by asking of every workforce dollar that comes before it, is this tied to demonstrate employer demand, is it driven by employer demand. And third, transit and last-mile infrastructure to job centers. The Navy Yard is producing incredible, real family- sustaining jobs. But workers still face barriers getting there. Investments in SEPTA connectivity, shuttle access, major employment centers close the final gap between a trained worker and an available job. Transportation is workforce policy. Expanding opportunity for Philadelphians requires both sides of the equation, connecting residents to good jobs, ensuring our economy grows to create more of them. Neither works without the other, and this region has underinvested in both for too long. Thank you for your leadership and for the opportunity to testify. I'm happy to answer questions.
Thank you for your testimony. Before we go to questions, Jodi, if you want to state your name for the record and then proceed with your testimony.
Good afternoon. Jodi Harris, President of PIDC. I'll just start with my testimony, if that's okay. Thank you for the opportunity to speak before you today about workforce development. As I stated, I am the President of PIDC, also known as the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation. We are the city's private-public economic development partner. For nearly 70 years, PIDC has worked to grow our city's economy and coordination with our colleagues at the Department of Commerce and other city agencies, along with nonprofit and private sector partners. We support businesses of all sizes, from neighborhood entrepreneurs to global manufacturers by expanding access to capital, delivering innovative financing for businesses and nonprofits, providing real estate solutions that enable companies to start and grow in Philadelphia and structuring the strategic partnerships that help revitalize communities and create jobs across the city. But we also believe in workforce development. Workforce development and job creation are not just social priorities. They are core economic development strategies that determine whether cities like Philadelphia remain competitive in attracting and growing employers. While our mission is city-focused, we recognize that Philadelphia's economy is deeply integrated within our surrounding region. PIDC is proud to be part of the Southeastern Pennsylvania Economic Collaborative, a multi-year partnership supported by the Brookings Institution and Pew Charitable Trust. As Katie mentioned, the Brookings research has identified a regional jobs deficit. While overall employment has grown, our region has lagged in producing the kinds of tradable industry jobs that drive long-term economic mobility, innovation-driven roles in sectors like advanced manufacturing, biomedical commercialization and enterprise digital solutions. PIDC is part of the Communications Committee that works with Pew and Brookings and our other partners to prepare for the upcoming release of the regional growth strategy. This playbook will align our five-county region around the three high-potential industry clusters. And by aligning economic development and workforce strategies around these sectors, we can strengthen the region's competitiveness while ensuring Philadelphia residents benefit from this growth. Philadelphia employers, particularly in advanced manufacturing, life sciences and maritime industries and technology, consistently tell us the same thing, their ability to grow depends on access to skilled workers. PIDC's workforce efforts are anchored in employer-driven training. We believe workforce programs are most effective when they begin with real hiring demand and designed around the specific skills employers need. This is a recurring theme we've heard all morning. This alignment is essential to connecting residents to quality job and career pathways rather than short-term or low-wage employment. A hallmark example of this approach is the Navy Yard Skills Initiative, operated in partnership with the University City District Skills Initiative. This collaboration has become a strong model for employer-driven workforce development. Since 2020, the program has run cohorts and helped over 4 250 Philadelphians launch new 5 careers. Just last week we 6 launched a new Welder B training 7 program in partnership with HANWHA 8 Philly Shipyard. This is a 14-week 9 program that combines professional 10 development, classroom training and 11 hands-on welding instruction, along 12 with stipends preparing residents 13 for full-time roles in 14 shipbuilding. But these are not 15 just jobs, they are good jobs. 16 Graduates of Skill Initiative 17 programs earn an average starting wage of more than $22 per hour, providing family-sustaining income and long-term career pathways. As you know, last year marked the 25th anniversary of PIDC's transformation of the Navy Yard, which has grown into one of Philadelphia's most dynamic employment centers.
Today the 1200-acre campus is home to more than 150 companies and 16,000 employees, spanning industries from advanced manufacturing and maritime to life sciences and technology. But most importantly, the workforce at the Navy Yard reflects the diversity of our city. 37 of the roles are filled by individuals with a GED or high school diploma. 27% have college experience and 36% hold a college degree or higher. This balance ensures that the Navy Yard provides a rungs-on-the-ladder approach to employment, offering opportunities for Philadelphians at every educational level. So as Council evaluates workforce development strategies, there are several areas where public policy can have a meaningful impact. First, continuing to support the employer-driven workforce model is essential. Programs like the Skills Initiative succeed because they are designed around real hiring demand. Second, as Nikki indicated, investments in the access to job centers is critically important. This includes transportation connections, that last-mile infrastructure. They're critical to linking residents to employment opportunities. And third, aligning the workforce investments with high-growth industry sectors will help ensure that Philadelphia residents benefit from the jobs that will define our regional economy in the decades ahead. So in closing, workforce development cannot exist in a silo. It must be integrated with the capital access we provide to small businesses, the real estate solutions that allow companies to grow here and the regional economic strategies that drive growth creation. By aligning training programs with the needs of employers like HANWHA Philly Shipyard, Iovance Biotherapeutics and Rhoads Industries, we are helping ensure Philadelphia's economic momentum translates into real opportunity for residents across the city. PIDC remains committed to working with city leadership, employers, workforce partners to expand these efforts and ensure more Philadelphians can access quality jobs, career mobility and long-term economic opportunity. Thank you.
Thank you so much for all your testimony. Chair recognizes Councilmember Johnson.
Thank you very much. And thank all three of you for your testimony. And I do hear the overall theme, employer-driven, correct?
Give me an idea, first and foremost, let's go back to this report that's coming out in May. It's the Regional Growth Strategy report and that was authored by Pew Charitable Trust.
So Pew with additional philanthropic partners invested in the development of the report the Brookings is leading on, but rather than your typical you hire a consultant and they come back with an idea --
Camille, could you just hold up one second please?
There has been a standing table, which we refer to as the Southeastern Pennsylvania Economic Collaborative, it has included active participation from Karen Fegely and her team at the Commerce Department. We work regularly with Carol as well and Philadelphia Works, and then the counterparts around the counties and the public workforce and economic development leads.
And, Camille, I was just going to ask, if you come to the table just for a second, just a brief question, because we're all collaborating together and I just want to get an idea from the city standpoint where are we when it comes to the employer-driven model? Because I know we're doing our investment on the budget side, so we've legislated significant funding on the front end for training programs like Rosie's Girls and the Sam Staten Sr. Apprenticeship Program. But could you just talk about the employer-driven model approach on the back-end?
Sure. So part of the FY26 funding that we've had was specifically allocated toward supporting employers through a number of different mechanisms. We've heard a lot from our partners that very much aligns with that work that we've done, particularly around employer -- one program is Employer of Choice program, where we recognize and invite employers who have demonstrated not only the willingness to employ our community members with good-paying jobs, but also to create the training programs and the other wraparound and supportive services needed to make sure that barriers are mitigated and that they're successful and can be retained. And through that program, we are able to provide training supports to those employers, models of programs that work, and we do that through that investment through that kind of community-building and partnership. There are additional investments that we've made in terms of not just again creating seats and availability, but making sure that where there are gaps in, say, grant funding or federal funding, other sources of monies that we are closing those gaps so that if it's an issue of transportation or it's an issue of child care, we're able to supplement from an employer's perspective their ability to be an active participant in this ecosystem.
Thank you very much. And I know doing the roundtable workforce, had a working group around this particular issue. One of the main barriers was transportation. And I did see that the Mayor put I think it was 15 million for one program and then 16 another I think 10 to 12 million 17 for another program that deals with 18 city employees to try to again also 19 alleviate some of the barriers. 20 That's all I have for you. 21
And I 22 will also just kind of reiterate 23 that again we've built some of that 24 into our programming. As Carol mentioned, in our CCME program we include a transportation benefit to allow folks to again not have to use the stipend exclusively --
They ain't give me no 12 transpass tokens. I had to do what I had to do, but this is great where we're at. So thank you, Camille. And I also acknowledge the work that Nicolas O'Rourke did around the advocacy around funding for those who need transportation to get to and from work, particularly from low-income neighborhoods. It was mentioned -- this really stuck out -- that our peer regions are outpacing Southeastern Pennsylvania in job growth, right. And so, what can we do more strategically because I don't like that, right. Our peer regions, that kind of struck me like, hold, wait a minute, now, what do we need to do as all of you being subject matter experts on this issue. And I'm glad we're talking about growth, right, because at the end of the day we want to grow the opportunities that are available to individuals who are looking to not only become gainfully employed but those who want a career, right, those who want to build generational wealth. So give me an idea from your perspective what we could be doing better as we move forward. I'm looking forward to this report as well.
I'm happy to start. So from my perspective, there's two things. So one, I think hopefully we drove home that this is really an opportunity to grow, right. We cannot have a conversation about connecting people to quality pathways if those pathways do not exist because the jobs do not exist. We just need more. How do we do that? One, we look at the assets that we already have in place and as a region, right, so these sectors were chosen because of what already exists and what has the opportunity, if given additional resources, if coordinated at regional scale, with that infusion of collaboration and capital has the ability to produce more of those quality jobs. That is why there's such a specific focus on these sectors, and I think why there really is the opportunity to grow what's working well, why not lean into where we're already seeing a lot of synergy. The second I will say is understanding that good workforce development is economic development. It contributes to growth, right. So organizations that continue to understand and validate the demand from employers and then make very specific connections to training that is meeting their needs, that is going to help companies grow, retain employees because they're continuing to invest in good- quality upskilling and reskilling. And the more that we can have a conversation that connects workforce development to economic development and is growth-oriented, I think the more we're going to be able to rely on the assets that are in place to make sure that we're producing more quality jobs.
That's all I have at the moment. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. The word that stuck out to me was regional here. And in chambers in your testimony it says civic fragmentation -- Philadelphia knows what civic fragmentation costs. And I think it's important that we as a region really work together to grow. Our political differences between Philadelphia and our surrounding counties have created this issue, I think. But I think with this report, hopefully it'll show that if we all work together, right, we're all in this together as a region, not just when we're advocating for SEPTA, but also for other things we depend on each other. I think that we can at least show some other folks that we need to work together to do better for all of us. And with PIDC's involvement, has -- I'm going to give an example. I have a friend of mine, one of my closest friends, he catches SEPTA all the way up to Warrington to U-Haul to work every morning. And everyone at his job for the most part are men from Philadelphia. They travel up to Warrington every day to go to work to build U-Haul trucks. And I think that you could build U-Haul trucks anywhere, right. So what can we do to incentivize some of those businesses that are outside of Philadelphia to want to continue to hire Philadelphians, but also to try to move to Philadelphia so their workers don't have to travel as far? Does PIDC allow for their financial tools to be used for those types of companies in Warrington if they can guarantee, hey, we're going to hire -- at least 70% of our work is going to be from Philadelphia just to keep our economy going in some way?
So PIDC by charter only supports businesses that are located in Philadelphia. But I do think what you're pointing to is the notion of collaboration. So through this partnership, we have increased our communication with the other counties to understand what the opportunities are, what the needs are. So when it comes to finding available real estate, when it comes to making sure that U-Haul understands that there are enough people that can support the growth that they project, we can help get involved in working with our partners to do that. So financially, we would not be able to offer U-Haul of Warrington alone, but we would be able to offer you all of Lower South Philly, Schuylkill. We would be able to offer them some type of financing. We have done deals though where we have required a certain percentage of employment, and it always depends. Not always, but it sometimes depends on the financing source because we leverage different types of funding to do our transactions. And so, we had a borrower recently who wanted to put in a particular type of business, and we required that 51% or more be local Philadelphia residents and be paid a certain wage. So we do have different tools that combined in working with the other partners in the group that we can leverage to bring and retain businesses in Philadelphia.
Thank you. I just don't want our own policies to further create that civic fragmentation that we have because businesses will choose to be outside of the city for a number of reasons, particularly our tax structure. So we still want to be able to have our Philadelphians, our people, going out there to those jobs to earn that living. Thank you.
Thank you. This is for Pew Charitable Trust. And also thank you, Katie. And I want to thank Rashawn for just working with my tech team, Brett Nedelkoff over there and Kareem as well always when it comes to policy things that we're trying to address, just being accessible not trying to mess up with contract fees, like just taking the phone calls for help, so thank you very much. Your research highlighted that there is a shortage of middle-wage jobs in Philadelphia, right. Give us an idea on strategies that you think have proven most effective in other regions to grow these types of jobs, particularly for workers without a four-year degree?
Great. Your energy around competition is what we are trying to harness here. And we for too long have been using that to compete with our neighbors instead of locking arms and competing with other regions. When regions work together, they're able to operate with a single voice to the state to leverage dollars and also federal dollars. So the Good Jobs Challenge that we're all so proud of would absolutely not have come to us if Philadelphia had said we're coming in. It was because we could bring together the workforce development boards from across the counties to say we are operating together and collectively we have those jobs. And so, sometimes there is that sense of if we operate regionally, we are going to lose out as a city, when in reality if we operate regionally, we bring more into the city and it benefits. And when we look at commuter patterns, it's good for Philadelphians working in Philadelphia and for Philadelphians who are traveling elsewhere. I would say in terms of something that City Council could help sort of support the messaging on, is that a regional approach is better for Philadelphia than a Philadelphia-only approach, including for Philadelphia local small businesses who will benefit from more money in the economy that it's absolutely both and, and not an either-or piece. And if I could just add on just in listening, one of the not great things about being third is that you lose audience, but you get to close. As I listen across these three panels, something that I'd love to just elevate is that we've talked about employer-driven being critically important. But when you listen to the incredible work that Cynthia and Sheila and Sarah are leading, they're employer first and also they have strong data capacity, they can answer your questions. They understand the importance and are able to leverage supportive services, including meals and transportation, in an environment where there's not enough to go around. They figured out how to connect it and they do retention support. So it's not just did I get the job, did I keep it, did I advance it. And so, when we think about doing this work at scale in the city and in this regional context, we need to think about what it costs for an organization to do all of those things, because too often the organizations that they are compared with are operating on lean, public, constricted dollars. And so, of course those folks want to be able to give you the data and provide the supportive services and do 6, 12, months of retention, but 5 that cost, they have to build that 6 capacity and that's resources. And 7 so, I think we have to have a sense 8 of that. 9 Connected to that, I 10 think we often think about money in 11 siloed. So what is the city budget 12 have, what is Philadelphia Works 13 that's the city's budget, and then 14 the role of philanthropy. When we 15 add all that together, we have much 16 more to leverage than each of those 17 funders working individually. And 18 then thirdly, how do we leverage that for system solutions. And I want to hold up two that were referenced today, because I think we want to lean into those and think of others. So first, the industry partnership model that Sarah talked about, they are leveraging all of their understanding of industry to organize in life sciences and in health care so that they're not just growing their own program, but they're helping other programs come to the table. And we're really interested in how we can seed and support industry partnerships in other places. And then secondly, Pat Clancy referenced this idea of bringing philanthropy to the table to support their publicly-funded programs. And then Carol mentioned being able to leverage that. And so, I wanted to give a little bit more context around the next step success pilot.
So essentially what that was, was folks from the chamber and the city coming to a group of funders and saying, forever and a day we have known that publicly- funded workforce dollars are either constrained or we don't have enough of them to provide the supportive wraparound services that our workforce training programs need. And there are experts who know how to do that if they had the right resources. 5 million to say, we will layer our money on top of these publicly-funded programs. We will fund the supportive services, more of them, better of them and we will evaluate whether that's working. That pilot has just started, but we see it as a systemic answer to the age-old problem of child care, transportation, housing, my car broke down. If the data tells us that this approach works, it is something that could be scaled and that is a system solution. So as we think about the dollars and the role of City Council philanthropy, can we work more together to use the limited money we have more effectively and then use those effective solutions to draw more private sector money in. So thanks for the opportunity to share those sort of closing thoughts as we listen across the panel.
Absolutely. Nikki from the Chamber, I think I know some of your responses. I want you to go on the record because I've probably been a part of some of these types of policies depending on the industry supports and not support. But I'm always advocating for the employees who work at different industries. But you mentioned that regulatory predictability is critical for business investment. And I want to get an idea of how we address this where there aren't policy barriers that will basically stifle growth, but also we want to be in an environment where we support, you know, those most vulnerable who still want to thrive and aren't taken advantage of in the business environment. So could you elaborate on that please for the record?
Well, I will say that there are colleagues at the Chamber who have much more extensive experience with you and your office on some of those things. But one area where I can lean into, which I think is actually a great example and we are grateful for the ongoing support and it was a true collaboration, was the Fair Chance Hiring ordinance. We worked very closely with City Council and the city itself to ensure that Councilperson Landau, the law that she was putting in front of business was going to be both conducive to businesses addressing and assessing people based on the skills and the experience that they had and not looking at all of what they brought to the table, including perhaps some experience with the criminal justice system. We found a solution that was good for business, that protected workers and that ultimately updated some of the regulations that she was interested in updating. But it took time, it took back and forth. It took a conversation. It took I think truly being able to say, okay, what is going to satisfy everyone who's at the table, but we were at the table together. And so, perhaps there are lots more details that my colleagues at the Chamber could share on a number of other policy issues, but I will emphasize that process was one that worked and it was a lot of back and forth. But the Chamber just released also our policy memo that really champions that collective action, that collective work. I'd be happy to share it with you. But overall, that process of being at the table and staying at the table was the one that ultimately got us all to the place that we needed to be. And I will say it is that collaborative infrastructure that we are also all advocating for at the regional scale. So what is different is you are not just going to see a report that comes out in May. There is an effort and the civic will is being cultivated to say, we commit to stay working together as a regional collaborative. And that is critically important. And that is what is different this time around. So that collaboration is essential. So I appreciate the opportunity to share that.
Thank you. And one more question and then Member Young will wrap us up. Jodie, give us just a brief idea on how you continue to utilize the Skills Initiative with the major corporations that are coming to the Navy Yard? How is that intertwined in the ten-year master plan? Because I know we got -- everyone talks about HANWHA, but there's Rhoads and there's other industries that are down there as well.
Thank you for the question. In general, the companies that locate at the Navy Yard are locating because they want to grow. Those that have significant employer base, they see the opportunity in being there. They see the opportunity not just in their footprint, but the ability to grow their workforce, so we plan. A lot of this when we talk about growth, we're talking about tactics we can do today, but it's also planning forward and projecting with them, how many employees do you think you'll need. And this goes back to the employer demand aspect of the Skills Initiative and other training programs. So we have to work to identify how many people, in particular, cohorts over the next few years will get these companies to the growth level that they project. And in terms of how we do that, we really rely on the employer to share their plans with us. So right now, as you mentioned, HANWHA is one of the largest, if not the largest employers who are looking at long- term growth. They are telling us based on their models and their calculations how many people that they think they will need and how many jobs they will bring. And we work with them to structure the cohorts and the sizes to be able to meet that. I mean, there are constraints around funding around capacity, but we try to plan it out so that as they're growing each year, there's an incoming class who are growing with them and not just in lateral moves, but also throughout their entire organization.
How do you intertwine this with other industries that are coming there besides HANWHA and Rhoads? When they come and say, hey, we want to be a tenant in the Navy Yard, right, do you look at it on the size, the scale and then say, however, we have a workforce development model that we would like to partner with you with or there might be a requirement for you to come do business? Talk to me about that aspect.
So what we found, and I think Katie and Nikki will also confirm this, is that when employers are looking to come to Philadelphia, one of their top questions is what's the talent like, what's the workforce like, am I going to be able to find people who can work here. And so, your last point about offering the Skills Initiative as part of the package to entice businesses to come here is critical. We have to demonstrate that we've done it successfully, which we have. We have to demonstrate that we are in partnership with other organizations in Philadelphia to build the workforce. And this is where that regional collaboration comes in, because we know that there's a percentage of our workers who are coming from the surrounding counties. So a lot of it is part of the promotion and the attraction package. Now, have we ever required that a company participate in order to locate at the Navy Yard? We have not. Because what we don't want to do, and you heard this earlier, is develop a cohort and then there's no jobs for them to graduate into. But it is definitely part of that conversation about am I going to be able to find the workers I need in Philadelphia.
And then I remember when I was running for City Council in 2011, and I was making the rounds and I was at the Sierra Building meeting with some companies, some lawyers and they were talking about their business here, and I was asking them, what do you think is the number one issue that needs to be addressed. And I'm a new person running for Council just left the State House. And I just knew they were going to say public safety. I just knew it. I'm like, they're going to say public safety. I was going to answer before I even asked the question, at least that's how I came into the room, just thinking that would be the case. But they said, no, workforce, what does the workforce look like. We're going to be here for a while and we really want to have an idea of what that workforce looks like for the long term. And so, this is very, very informative. The Chair recognizes Councilmember Jeffrey Jay Young.
Thank you. Thank you, Mr. President. And this question I have is for the Chamber and talking about regional economies. How does this Chamber promote and connect summer internships to some of those businesses that are around our region, not just here in Philadelphia to expose our kids so they can continue to be that pipeline that these employers want to have? So has the Chamber exposed our youth to those opportunities? And what partnerships do you have with the school district, things like that?
Thank you, sir. I've been waiting for this question. So obviously we understand that, you know, the bedrock of the entire workforce starts young, right. And so, early exposure is critically important. We are very proud to be a partner with specifically the C2L summer and yearlong initiative here with the school district and Philadelphia Works and the city. We are doing all that we can to promote both in terms of get the word out, let businesses know that this is an option and that there are an incredible amount of supports in place for businesses, no matter where they are on the spectrum of engagement. And I think that's really important, right. So even if you're a small firm, you may not be able to take on young people or young people under the age of 18, but you could go into a classroom, you can share more about the work that you do in whatever industry that you're in or perhaps you're interested in taking on a summer intern or perhaps you're interested in building a yearlong internship or building an apprenticeship. We are trying to meet employers wherever they are and then connect them to the organizations that have the resources to support them. That is critical in, one, a successful experience for young people. And, two, organizations are doing what they're doing, right. They may be doing precision manufacturing. They may be doing media, they may be doing education. That doesn't necessarily mean that they understand all that's required to support a young person in a meaningful experience. So we are also building in the opportunity for them to receive information and technical assistance so they can make a really valuable contribution to that young person's journey. So we are doing all that we can to make sure that information is out there and businesses know where to plug in, but also that they feel supported as they are going further and further, we hope, down the path of engagement from exposure to hiring.
Thank you. I just want to do a shameless plug. My office is hosting a Youth Job Fair April 11th at Temple University. So the Chamber or its members, we would love to connect your members to those youth who are looking for those opportunities. So I look forward to continue to work with you all on this important issue.
Because I learned in college that regionalism is very important. And so, we have to continue to push forward to that. Thank you, Mr. President.
Thank you, Member Young. Any other questions or comments from members of this committee? (No response.)
Hearing none, I want to thank you very much for being here today. Mr. McMonagle, there are no other panels. And so, are there any questions from members or witnesses who didn't testify? (No response.)
Being there is none present, anyone in this hearing whose name we have failed to call that wants to testify today? (No response.)
No? Okay. This concludes our hearing. I want to thank everybody that participated on the panel. Resolution No. 21 260032 will be held to the call of the Chair. This concludes the business before the Committee on Commerce and Economic Development. Thank you all very much for your informative panel discussion today. - - - (Committee on Commerce and Economic Development concluded at 1:35 p.m.) - - - C E R T I F I C A T I O N I, hereby certify that the proceedings and evidence noted are contained fully and accurately in the stenographic notes taken by me in the foregoing matter, and that this is a correct transcript of the same. _______________________________ TANEHA CARROLL