Jobs Will Expand in Chicago; the Problem Is Finding Enough Skilled People to Take Them

The unofficial capital of the Midwest will soon recover all of the jobs it has lost the last decade, but the “mismatch between job-seeker skills and business needs could hurt the region’s economic competitiveness and limit the financial well-being of hundreds of thousands of people in the Chicago area.”

That’s the upshot of a new report from JPMorgan Chase.

Chicago, more than many other cities, has a mix of both services and manufacturing. That’ll work to the city’s benefit, the report says, creating growth in a variety of industries, including healthcare and logistics. But among the challenges:

the region has a high number of long-term unemployed, and they’ve been out of work longer than the U.S. average.
sadly, a lot of people have criminal records, making it harder for them to find jobs.
the public workforce system spends a lot of money, but “only 3 percent flows to employers, suggesting that their influence on regional training priorities is limited.”
And interestingly, this one: “… the heavy presence of staffing firms within logistics and independent contractors within trucking limit workers’ access to training, as employers prefer to direct their training resources to permanent employees.”

More here.