Community Development Creates Jobs, But Who is Applying?

My company runs an employment center in McKees Rocks, PA, which is just outside of Pittsburgh (learn more at www.thealbertinstitute.com.)  McKees Rocks is a small town; in fact, a walk from one end of the main street to another is just about 1.5 miles. There are just over 6000 residents.  About 19% of those residents are documented as unemployed.

Now, you can probably guess by those unemployment numbers that McKees Rocks is a small, poverty stricken town where crime is high and resources are low.  Lack of education, limited transportation and just general disenfranchisement probably lead to high unemployment, right?  To some degree this is true, but let me tell you what is really going on in this Small Town, USA.

We partnered with the McKees Rocks Community Development Corporation (CDC) in October of 2006 to open the employment center.  The center serves about 150 job seekers per year, but those job seekers come from all over the Pittsburgh-area; they are not just McKees Rocks residents.  Simultaneous to the employment center's efforts, the McKees Rocks CDC has made tremendous efforts to stabilize and revitalize the community.  Those efforts include transformation of the neighborhood's shopping plaza, which drew in a new Rite-Aid, Aldi's and Subway.  The CDC has recently been involved in helping advocate for and advertise the opening of a Bottom Dollar store.  Now, the McKees Rocks CDC is helping to spearhead the development of an industrial park that will result in approximately 1000 new jobs for the town.

These efforts have generated 100's of new jobs.  So many businesses in McKees Rocks are hiring.  The steel fabricators and machine shops are seeking skilled and unskilled labor; the stores are filling retail positions.  A temp-to-perm staffing agency has opened to help fill these positions.  The community development efforts have, without a doubt, helped to generate new jobs.  McKees Rocks is a great case study to prove that community development and employment go hand-in-hand.  Yet, the unemployment rate is higher in McKees Rocks than in most areas around Pittsburgh.

So, we start this month's discussion around community development with this question: If community revitalization efforts and the trend for young professionals to live in small towns near big cities is happening all over the country, why aren't local residents taking advantage of the new jobs?  I drove through my small borough on Saturday and counted over 30 different 'Help Wanted' or 'Now Hiring' signs.  Everything from the local Midas to Pizza Hut to the small mom & pop coffee house is seeking workers, but cannot find applicants.  The efforts to rebuild small towns seems to be generating jobs, but who is taking advantage of these employment opportunities?