The Civic Committee’s ambitious goal is to facilitate the creation of 20,000 new jobs in Chicago’s South and West Side neighborhoods by 2029.
This goal is about building stronger communities, reducing violence, and creating sustainable economic growth in areas that have historically experienced disinvestment.
Establishing the Baseline
To set a meaningful and measurable goal, the Civic Committee surveyed its membership in 2023 about their hiring in selected South and West Side communities.
The results showed participating companies (30 respondents) were hiring approximately 2,200 people annually from these community areas. To fill 20,000 jobs over five years, participating companies would need to increase their pace of hiring by about 80% to reach a rate of 4,000 hires per year. Broadening the base of company participation will also help to move us towards our goal.
We continue to recruit Civic Committee and Commercial Club Members to participate and have expanded our efforts by engaging non-member companies and local businesses to join this citywide initiative. We will periodically repeat the baselining survey to track progress.
Employment Opportunities for CVI Participants
Because the Community Violence Intervention (CVI) population—those at highest risk of involvement in gun violence—is of such high significance for public safety, we have a special focus on creating employment opportunities for CVI program alumni and are closely tracking our progress on that goal.
Related strategy: Scaling CVI
Implementation Partner Results
To support our Members’ hiring commitments, we have partnered with established workforce development organizations that provide job seekers with essential training, coaching, and connections to employment opportunities.
These implementation partners also assist employers in understanding and addressing the unique challenges facing candidates from our community areas of focus.
Since launching this initiative in 2023, our implementation partners have helped hundreds of unique individuals from Chicago’s South and West Sides secure employment. The visualizations below provide detailed insights into our progress.
How It’s Going
Below we are tracking the number of job placements our implementation partners are making, as well as the number of placements specifically in our Community Areas of Focus.
Where We’re Working
See the specific Community Areas where our implementation partners are making job placements, along with aggregate information about the nature of those placements in each area.
Community Impact Metrics
The selected South and West Side community areas currently experience employment rates and median household incomes lower than Chicago’s citywide averages.
Our hiring initiative aims to narrow these gaps. According to an analysis by Boston Consulting Group, achieving our goal of 20,000 new jobs should close approximately one-third of the employment gap between these community areas and the rest of Chicago.
The visualization below tracks our progress in improving these critical economic indicators across our communities of focus.
Methodology
Definitions
- Job Placements: The number of times people were placed in jobs through our implementation partners, Cara Collective and Skills for Chicago. The job placement map shows the residence of the people placed in jobs through these programs, not the location of the job.
- Retention Rates: The percent of people who were retained in their job for at least the reference period (30-, 60-, 90-days, 6 months, and 1 year). The calculation is based on a denominator of all participants who remain in contact with the program over that period and are deemed eligible for inclusion.
- Employment Rate: The percent of the labor force that is employed.
- Median Household Income: The median income of households.
Sources
- Job Placements: Administrative records of implementation partners
- Employment: 2018-2022 American Community Survey: Table B23001
- Median Household Income: 2018-2022 American Community Survey: Table B19013
Limitations
- Job placement data depicted here include job placements through Cara Collective and Skills for Chicago and do not include all jobs that have been filled as a result of this hiring initiative. For example, jobs filled through direct hiring by Member companies are not included here.
- Some job placement records have incomplete addresses and as a result are not included in the job placement map.
- Civic Committee’s implementation partners work to maintain contact with program participants for up to one year after placement, however, in some cases contact is lost and job length is unknown. These cases are removed for the purposes of calculating retention.
- Employment rate and median household income are statistical estimates, which include a margin of error. This means that while the rankings provide a general sense of relative standing, small differences between areas may not be statistically significant and actual rankings may differ.
Additional Notes
It’s important to recognize that individuals leave their jobs for a wide range of reasons—both positive and negative. For instance, someone might acquire valuable skills in one role that enable them to transition into a higher-paying position elsewhere. While this may reduce the overall retention rate of the program, it represents a positive and successful outcome for the individual.
