Manufacturing Prosperity: Insights from the Midwest

At a time of renewed interest in both American industrial strength and socioeconomic equity, the Biden–Harris administration led with bold, community-driven federal investments designed to strengthen manufacturing and broaden economic participation. Through initiatives like such as the Economic Development Administration’s Recompete pilot program, the Good Jobs and Build Back Better Regional Challenges, and the Department of Defense CHIPS Microelectronics Commons program, the administration deployed a place-based strategy to ensure that the economic gains from industrial policy were not concentrated in a few regions and populations, but broadly shared across urban, suburban, and rural communities. At its core, this approach recognized that empowering local ecosystems—those closest to the workforce and the industries these investments serve—is essential to building inclusive talent pipelines and ensuring growth is equitable. These place-based investments were designed to drive more than an industrial resurgence—they were a structural strategy for embedding equity into federal initiatives and economic growth by aligning training, infrastructure, and employer commitments within local contexts.

This report draws on lessons from The Century Foundation and Urban Manufacturing Alliance’s Industry and Inclusion (I&I) initiative¹—a national effort launched in 2020 to help community colleges, workforce intermediaries, and manufacturers build more equitable manufacturing ecosystems. As federal funds flowed to regional manufacturing hubs in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, I&I helped ensure that those dollars translated into accessible, high-quality jobs for workers historically excluded from the sector. Through four national cohorts across eighteen states and twenty-six communities providing training, I&I has worked to scale models of inclusive training, trauma-informed instruction, and employer accountability. This report summarizes lessons learned from the third I&I cohort, which worked with awardees of the Good Jobs Challenge and Build Back Better Regional Challenge—flagship place-based initiatives funded by the American Rescue Plan—in Northeast Ohio; in Detroit, Michigan; and in Chicago (Cook County), Illinois. The report provides key takeaways, policy recommendations, and best practices for how future place-based investments can center equity, maximize impact, and prepare America’s workforce for the jobs of tomorrow.

The Biden–Harris Administration Strategy on Place-Based Investment

The period from 2021 to 2024 saw generational investments in infrastructure, semiconductors, and clean energy from the Biden–Harris administration’s Investing in America (IIA) agenda—including the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Together, these investments formed the foundation of the largest-scale industrial policy strategy in the nation’s history, designed to revitalize critical sectors like manufacturing and transportation, jumpstart innovation, and transition the country to a clean energy future. These investments continue to create hundreds of thousands of good, family-sustaining jobs today, thanks in part to strong labor standards embedded in the laws and their implementation, such as prevailing wage and registered apprenticeship requirements.

Rather than a top-down approach, the Biden–Harris administration chose to enact its industrial policy strategy from the bottom up—crafting IIA programs to ensure that local communities and workers would be their primary beneficiaries. Over four years, the Administration announced 72,000 projects² across the country, leveraging the historic resources from BIL, CHIPS, and IRA to pursue place-based policy³—an economic development theory that targets explicit geographies to spur and support local interventions. These projects were disproportionately concentrated in left-behind and hard-hit communities, which received a disproportionately large share⁴ of investment from the IIA agenda. In just one example, more than 80 percent⁵ of clean energy investment dollars from the IRA went to projects in counties with below-average weekly wages.

None of these new projects would be possible without well-trained workers—from construction workers to technicians, engineers to electricians, and more. As a key plank of its industrial policy strategy, the Biden–Harris administration expanded workforce investments—prioritizing evidence-based approaches that are proven to deliver lasting earnings gains and lead directly to good-paying jobs. These approaches include sectoral training partnerships, which bring together employers in a specific sector with other key partners—such as workforce boards, education and training providers, unions, and community-based groups—to design high-quality, industry-relevant training and place workers into good jobs. They also include registered apprenticeship programs—in which workers earn a paycheck while they train under an industry-vetted, U.S. Department of Labor–approved curriculum—and other high-quality labor-management partnership training programs. Expanding these evidence-based approaches across the country is not only helping fill the good jobs created by BIL, CHIPS, and IRA projects—it is establishing high-quality training infrastructure that will benefit workers and employers for decades to come. Community colleges and the public workforce system were at the heart of many of these initiatives mobilizing existing training and education infrastructure to this critical national purpose.

The Biden–Harris administration used major funding competitions to maximize the impact of thousands of place-based industrial policy projects and help local areas develop the skilled, diverse workforce needed to carry them out. These competitions offered groups of key community stakeholders the opportunity to win significant federal support for their high-quality plans to tackle their community’s economic development and workforce needs. For example, the Build Back Better Regional Challenge⁶ awarded $1 billion from ARPA to twenty-one competitively selected regions to supercharge local development of clusters of critical industries and technologies—from manufacturing to biotech, aerospace, and clean energy—over a period of five years. The Good Jobs Challenge⁷ used $500 million in ARPA funds to support thirty-two industry-led, worker-centered training partnerships, removing barriers to training and placing a diverse workforce into good-paying jobs in fifteen key industries. Other examples of place-based economic development competitions with workforce components include the Recompete⁸ program for distressed areas, the Tech Hubs⁹ program, and the Regional Innovation Engines¹⁰ program. In addition, the Department of Labor ran competitions to expand sectoral partnerships and registered apprenticeship and pre-apprenticeship programs across the country—including in the Nursing Expansion Grant Program¹¹ and multiple rounds of Building Pathways to Infrastructure Jobs¹² and Apprenticeship Building America¹³ grants. Collectively, the Biden–Harris administration invested more than $700 million in sectoral training and $730 million in registered apprenticeship, leading to the hiring of more than 1 million apprentices in four years.

Through these competitions, Industry and Inclusion 3.0 cohort members collectively received $100 million in grants to support their high-quality economic and workforce development plans. In Detroit, SEMCA, Detroit Future City, and other members of the Global Epicenter of Mobility (GEM) coalition are leveraging a Build Back Better Regional Challenge award of more than $52 million to transform the city’s historic automotive industry into a highly competitive advanced mobility cluster. In Northeast Ohio, the Ohio Manufacturers’ Association and its partners, including more than 100 employers, are using a Good Jobs Challenge award of nearly $23.5 million to bring a younger, more diverse generation into quality careers in manufacturing and scale its evidence-based Entry-Level Earning and Learn Model across its network of sixteen sector partnerships. And in Chicago, the Cook County Bureau of Economic Development is leading one of several sector partnerships supported by a $18.5 million Good Jobs Challenge grant, focused on placing Chicago workers in quality manufacturing careers.

The Industry and Inclusion Project

The Industry and Inclusion Project (I&I) was launched in 2020 by The Century Foundation and the Urban Manufacturing Alliance at a time of immense uncertainty during which the country was navigating a public health crisis, protests about racial violence, and an economic disaster. In the midst of these “triple crises,” the COVID-19 pandemic drew personal and political attention to the need for robust industrial policy, and having the talent for a full economic recovery. At this pivotal moment, I&I was stood up to (1) fill workforce gaps in the industrial base, which had 2 million job openings; (2) create a community of practice where national workforce stakeholders could learn best practices for bolstering their local manufacturing sector through inclusive talent models; and (3) help manufacturing ecosystems bolster the success of students and workers of color in manufacturing programs and jobs. The project is currently in its fourth iteration and has engaged twenty-six communities in eighteen states with 105 institutional members across all I&I projects.

The first I&I cohort, composed of eight community-embedded job training leaders, came together to identify the barriers to entry for historically excluded workers in manufacturing. These organizations demonstrated how to forge racially conscious industry partnerships among companies, organizations, and their trainees to foster belongingness, and a sense of responsibility among manufacturers in the communities they operate. Lessons from this cohort were distilled into a Blueprint for Action.¹⁴ Meeting the scale of workforce challenges of manufacturing requires the capacity of community colleges. I&I’s second cohort interviewed more than ninety community colleges and ultimately selected twelve to engage in developing a model for impactful credentialing,¹⁵ which pursues relationship-building as a key strategy and centers approaches that foster belongingness and equity for workers and communities. Through the second project, community colleges convened on a monthly basis virtually and achieved key milestones,¹⁶ including increased hiring of women faculty and leadership in manufacturing community college programs. All twelve participating community colleges restructured their recruitment efforts to better attract and retain underrepresented students in their manufacturing credentialing programs. In addition, one-third of participating community colleges redirected their focus towards hiring and retaining women faculty or adopting programs to retain women students as a result of I&I participation, and inclusive recruitment methods of historically excluded communities in manufacturing credentialing programs.

This report summarizes the finding of the third cohort involved in this project. To translate these lessons into Biden-era place-based initiatives, I&I established a third cohort of U.S. Department of Commerce-funded workforce organizations. In this third iteration,¹⁷ TCF and UMA engaged local employers, workforce entities, and workers in Northeast Ohio; in Detroit, Michigan; and in the Chicago metropolitan area (Cook County), Illinois to deepen inclusive hiring and training efforts. This work has included peer learning and technical assistance around topics including designing successful industry sector partnerships in rural communities, engaging employers in addressing barriers to applying and hiring for positions, and building effective recruitment and outreach strategies. The fourth, recently launched, iteration is using regional efforts to bring manufacturing job opportunities to a broader array of talent. To date, the I&I project has touched 6,000 students, and will continue to serve as an intermediary for designing inclusive workforce ecosystems to boost the nation’s industrial capacity.

Industry and Inclusion Case Studies

This iteration of the Industry & Inclusion (I&I) program focused on supporting regional grantees by equipping them with tools and strategies to embed equity into manufacturing workforce systems. I&I facilitated peer learning and technical assistance through a combination of national convenings, targeted coaching, and cross-site learning exchanges. Participants engaged in structured workshops on topics such as trauma-informed instruction, culturally responsive pedagogy, and recruitment strategies for historically excluded populations. I&I also supported regions in employer engagement, helping to convene roundtables and shape hiring practices that reduce barriers to entry. Throughout the cohort, I&I provided curated resources and one-on-one advising to strengthen participant capacity in areas like employer accountability, wraparound supports, and talent pipeline alignment.

The case studies that follow are designed to illustrate how these approaches were adapted and implemented in three distinct regional contexts—Northeast Ohio, Detroit, and Chicago (Cook County). They highlight the value of place-based industrial investment when paired with intentional, equity-centered workforce strategies. Each case offers insight into how regions confronted structural challenges, leveraged local partnerships, and used I&I support to center worker voice and expand access to high-quality careers. Collectively, these stories serve as models for how federal industrial policy can be operationalized at the local level to build more inclusive and resilient economies.

How Ohio Is Utilizing Local Workforce Ecosystems for Sector-Based Strategies

Ohio is the fourth-largest manufacturing state in the nation in terms of jobs and economic output.¹⁸ In 2023, the manufacturing industry provided over 680,000 jobs¹⁹ in the state with average hourly earnings of $31.38/hour.²⁰ Ohio’s manufacturing sector is driven by small- and medium-sized enterprises,²¹ representing over 85 percent of firms statewide. Fueled by a longstanding industrial legacy, manufacturing in Ohio is becoming more efficient, productive, and greener than ever. Ohio is a national leader in emerging technologies, including the industrial Internet of Things, automation, electrical vehicles, and cyber/physical systems that are revolutionizing the industry.

Recognizing the strength of Ohio’s manufacturing community, the Ohio Manufacturers’ Association (OMA) was awarded a Good Jobs Challenge grant by the Biden–Harris administration to support their network of nineteen endorsed Industry Sector Partnerships (ISPs) to build capacity and implement workforce development strategies for entry-level and middle-skill occupations. ISPs are place-based collaboratives that are led by business to solve common workforce challenges. Due to their specific regional focus, ISPs are able to address the unique dynamics of subsectors within their geographic footprint, reflecting the local economy and community. In addition to industry, ISPs include representatives from organizations focused on education, training, economic development, and human services, as well as community-based organizations. This hyper-local focus allows each ISP to analyze the assets available within their community and align them with the workforce needs of employers to build strong talent pipelines that benefit all members of the community while supporting the local economy. The workforce strategies for the Good Jobs Challenge grant focused on key roles in automation, industrial maintenance, machining, production, and welding.

The localized structure of the ISP also allows for deep community engagement. Each ISP is able to identify new talent markets for manufacturing, whether regionally defined, such as rural or Appalachian populations, or defined by populations, such as returning citizens, veterans, or locally concentrated demographic groups. This flexibility of approach allows the ISP to build outreach strategies to reach untapped talent pools and create connections for manufacturers that have unmet hiring needs.

OMA has convened a learning community to support the ISP network and build their capacity to meet the needs of their local manufacturers. Through this learning community, ISPs are able to connect with each other, lift up common challenges, and advocate for shared funding and policy change. OMA also provides the ISPs with technical assistance for grant management and connection to subject matter experts on strategy, data collection, and sustainability. This ground-up approach allows for local challenges to surface and allows for custom solution creation. Additionally, the OMA provides statewide support, including raising awareness among lawmakers of the ISP approach and convening training sessions to support ISPs and manufacturers on topics such as reaching untapped talent pools.

Engaging Employers for Solution Creation

ISPs are employer-led by design. This gives them an advantage in developing workforce solutions. The ISP builds relationships with the manufacturing employers in the region through facilitated conversations (lunch-and-learns, listening sessions, and so on), site visits, networking events, and connection-building. This allows employers at all stages of hiring and growth to participate in addressing regional workforce challenges, even though they may not have an immediate talent need.

Based on the needs identified by manufacturers, the OMA focused on two central workforce strategies prioritized in the Good Jobs Challenge program, which were deployed by the ISP network. The first was WorkAdvance, a sector-specific approach to engaging new talent and providing training for entry-level jobs. WorkAdvance includes the following components:

• manufacturing-specific recruitment,
• screening for program fit and eligibility,
• technical training resulting in an industry-recognized certification,
• professional development through soft-skills training,
• connection to wrap-around services,
• ongoing job and retention coaching, and
• job placement.

As a first strategy in the Good Jobs Challenge grant, each ISP was responsible for developing and implementing a WorkAdvance approach that fit their local context. This variation allowed for each ISP to create a program that leveraged partnerships and met the needs of their community. For example, some ISPs created WorkAdvance programs that served high school seniors who are just entering the job market, while others focused on grassroots outreach to engage recently returned citizens to help them find stable employment—a key factor in reducing recidivism.

The second workforce strategy used in the Good Jobs Challenge grant was upskilling for incumbent workers. OMA recognized that entry-level occupations were only the first step in a quality manufacturing career pathway. To ensure that entry-level workers had opportunities for mobility, the grant provided funding to ISPs to work with their local manufacturers to provide training for incumbent entry-level workers which helped them move into middle-skill occupations. Again, due to the hyper-localized nature of the ISPs, the methods for upskilling varied greatly. Some ISPs partnered closely with community colleges to provide cohort-based training for common talent needs, while others focused on leadership training to help move entry-level workers into supervisory roles. Variation also existed within an ISP’s portfolio and was dependent upon the needs of employers.

As of the first quarter of 2025, the Good Jobs Challenge has served 4,068 Ohioans statewide, with 2,729 people completing WorkAdvance training and 2,442 people either placed into or upskilled within a manufacturing occupation. The grant’s period of performance continues through June 2025.

Statewide Support to Address Local Implementation Challenges

While the adaptability of the workforce strategies have created the conditions for successful outcomes, it has not been without its challenges, primarily data collection. Each ISP has a different level of experience with data collection. Some ISPs have been individual recipients of federal grant funding and had the internal capacity to collect and safely manage participant data, while others were first-time federal grantees. Additionally, the Good Jobs Challenge had a hierarchy of data collection, with OMA ultimately responsible for the data statewide, the ISPs responsible for their local data, which may in turn include collecting data from partner organizations such as training providers or community-based organizations providing job coaching services. Another challenge identified related to data was staff turnover at ISPs. To help mitigate these challenges, OMA brought on data collection subject matter experts to help build shared data collection processes and data-sharing agreements to build internal data capabilities to weather staff turnover and ensure consistency across ISPs.

In addition to the mechanics of data collection, the variation in implementation of strategy posed a challenge for information synthesis. WorkAdvance provides a framework to measure impact along traditional program outcomes such as enrollment, completion, placement, and retention, while the upskilling strategy’s metrics focus on changes to titles and wage increases. These metrics reflect the differences in approaches for upskilling incumbent workers that were customized to meet the needs of each individual employer. This deep customization has made it hard for OMA to assess which upskilling approach has created the most value for both employers and workers.

Local Lessons for Statewide Systems Change

With the period of performance of the Good Jobs Challenge grant coming to a close, a number of key lessons have emerged. First is the value of ISPs. Throughout the grant, the ISPs were able to adapt to changing conditions and continue to meet the needs of their employer partners while expanding access to manufacturing careers within their communities. OMA will use the Good Jobs Challenge outcomes as the foundation for continued advocacy for their network of endorsed ISPs statewide.

The second lesson learned for OMA was about solution creation. Beth Hahn, senior director, workforce services at OMA noted that community-based strategies that circulate from the ground up, such as WorkAdvance, create better and more sustainable solutions for talent challenges, but are slower to develop and scale. The ground-up approach “moves at the speed of relationships.” Conversely, top-down approaches that are led by statewide organizations are best used when fostering shared learning, advocacy, and funding but are too one-size-fits-all for creating localized systems change.

Finally, the flexibility to serve their own region helped the ISPs create solutions that support their own talent markets and reach distressed communities. For example, an ISP in Northwest Ohio worked with the leadership at a local manufacturer to provide English as a second language classes to entry-level workers who would benefit and also offered Spanish language classes for frontline supervisors and leadership. This approach helped build recruitment efforts within the community and boosted employee retention, lowering labor costs for the employer and building a sustainable pool of talent.

How Detroit Is Using Place-Based Funding to Fuel a Motor City Workforce Revival

Detroit is the city that put the world on dance floors through Motown Records, while putting the world on wheels. For nearly 800,000 Black Americans who relocated to Detroit between 1910 and 1970,²² Detroit was the safe haven, particularly from lynchings and systemic oppression. Black job seekers fleeing the prejudice in hiring from other parts of the country could relocate to Detroit for a well-paying manufacturing job, with or without a four-year college degree. Historically, the ecosystem of workforce, community, and economic development in Detroit comes with peaks and valleys, and most importantly, perseverance. In the aftermath of white (and Black) flight²³ to the suburbs, industrial decentralization,²⁴ and economic downturns, 136 organizations came together in coalition amidst the latest resurgence in Detroit’s industrial economy. This case study discusses their collaboration and place-based industrial funding as a national blueprint for economic mobility. The study also includes recommendations on how the Motor City can continue to rebuild a labor market that works for working people.

The Build Back Better Regional Challenge and GEM Initiative

In 2022, the Economic Development Administration (housed within the U.S. Department of Commerce) awarded²⁵ the Detroit Regional Partnership (DRP) and its partners $52.2 million through the Build Back Better Regional Challenge (BBBRC). The title of the project is the Global Epicenter of Mobility (GEM) Initiative,²⁶ and, as said by the president of DRP,²⁷ “simply put, [the grant] will support workers, startups, and companies as they adapt to the new high-tech advanced mobility industry as it rapidly evolves.”

While the grant was awarded during an unprecedented time of increased federal industrial investments during the Biden–Harris administration, the blueprint for propelling Detroit into an epicenter of transportation and mobility was developed years before. In 2017, Detroit lost a bid to host Amazon’s second North American headquarters and regional leaders attributed this to a lack of mass transit and the city’s questioned ability to attract talent.²⁸ Detroit may have lost the bid, but the city did not lose its vision of becoming a global mobility hub.

The BBBRC award enabled the conditions for Detroit to catalyze the development of a skilled and talented mobility sector workforce, create start-up businesses, and retain its tier one research and innovation base. The need was based on a mobility industry that is moving from internal combustion engines to electric vehicles, and a workforce that is retiring or reaching retirement age. Unlike the city’s historic focus on solely automotive, the GEM initiative also enabled DRP to broaden its definition of mobility to the movement of people and goods, and the technologies that support them.

An Inclusive Framework for Preserving Traditional Production in the Midst of Transition

Preparing for the BBBRC grant was an all-encompassing process. As DRP publicized requests for project proposals after formalizing their intention to apply for a BBBRC grant, every proposal the partnership received had a focus on mobility, and almost every one had a talent component. This solidified the need to focus on upskilling the Detroit region’s workforce and to take an inclusive approach on mobility. Upon learning they were awarded the BBBRC grant and prior to receiving the funds, DRP and coalition partners committed to preserving the historic automotive supply chain of the city, while preparing a workforce for the global electric vehicle (EV) market. Contrary to initial research that forecasted a 30 percent to 40 percent job reduction in the transition from internal combustion engine (ICE) production to electric vehicle (EV) production, the University of Michigan later found that the transition to electric vehicles actually grew the workforce at factories that shifted from ICE to EVs.²⁹ At one plant, the number of workers required to produce each EV vehicle was three times higher³⁰ than ICE production. While actions by the Trump administration on tariffs and to propose a repeal of electric vehicle tax credits are projected to drastically slow³¹ the production of electric vehicles in the short term, the transition to EVs will continue as the technology matures. DRP is also leveraging the intellectual capital of their tier one research universities, including the University of Michigan, to track the transition to EV and milestones in talent acquisition.

After being named an awardee but before receiving funds, DRP convened more than 150 stakeholders in the mobility ecosystem on a weekly basis and asked: “Who is not at the table and who should be here to support the workforce ecosystem?” DRP wanted all of their coalition partners to be funded to have the infrastructure for data sharing and cross-pollination. The Southeast Michigan Community Alliance (SEMCA Michigan Works!) was identified as the lead organization for the talent pillar of the grant. Community colleges continued to be the primary training providers for the DRP to respond to the local labor markets. Some community colleges had already built an electric vehicle training program, while some were in the process of building a program, and partnered with an industry partner to teach the related courses. The BBBRC grant was used for students to participate in the training. In building out the program, the coalition sought to learn from the lessons No Worker Left Behind Program,³² which streamlined access for under and unemployed students, but did not have a consistent approach to making sure credentials across the state were well-aligned to employer demands.

Employers also continued to be the partnership’s customers and advisors. For example, the Electric Vehicle Jobs Academy (EVJA)³³—an employer-led collaborative that identifies occupational skill needs and has built credentialing programs at thirty-two colleges and universities statewide—informed the training process. As stated by the academy’s CEO, “the academy puts EV employers in the driver’s seat to develop education and training to meet the industry’s talent needs.” The academy, initially part of SEMCA’s Workforce Intelligence Network (WIN) was later coordinated by the State of Michigan’s Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity (LEO) in the summer of 2024, to lead a state-wide White House workforce hub for electric vehicles.³⁴ The GEM initiative also included key community-based organizations that were the boots on the ground for identifying the barriers to employment for historically excluded communities and providing the human-centered recommendations for equitable hiring and placement—important in a city like Detroit, which has a 77 percent Black population.³⁵

Preparing for the Jobs of the Future While Employing People in the Present Moment

Although the GEM initiative defined mobility broadly, they primarily targeted small- and medium-sized manufacturing companies, particularly those specializing in supporting electric vehicles, due to the projected jobs in the region. The initiative had to pivot its training due to slower than expected development of EV jobs, and the need to secure employment for trainees. Southeast Michigan Community Alliance (SEMCA) Michigan Works! shifted to preparing job seekers for the jobs that exist today, while also preparing for the pathways of the future to make an easier transition as more EV jobs come online. They shifted to preparing workers for jobs in mobility, electrification, and advanced manufacturing, all outside of the production of electric vehicles themselves. Based on a market analysis from an employer-led collaborative, the GEM program funds courses related to ten career profiles through which job seekers can get training, including electrical technicians, industrial machinery mechanics, and fabricators. Electrification is a key component of existing manufacturing, and SEMCA’s approach enables workers to find jobs today and be poised for jobs tomorrow. Through partnerships with community colleges, licensed private training organizations, and higher education institutions, these courses are available statewide.³⁶

Going Bigger to Enhance Grant Delivery Tools

As the city of Detroit has done for decades, Detroit’s BBBRC initiative navigated challenges in the auto industry, in this case, the slower than expected growth of the EV transition. In reflecting on the initiative, coalition members pointed to a greater role for Detroit’s Big Three companies—General Motors, Stellantis (formerly Chrysler), and Ford Motor Company. Historically, these companies provided certification and upskilling opportunities to workers, but they were not involved in this grant for providing the same opportunities in the electric vehicle industry. Involving The Big Three would enable feedback from managers and workers on how to best design training in the electric vehicle industry, increasing worker power and collective interest, such as the employee discount if workers purchase a vehicle from their place of employment—an economic win for the company and workers alike. The Big Three also have the opportunity to hire the workers trained through the BBBRC grant or future iterations, creating a positive return on investment for companies and the workers alike, particularly through higher worker retention rates. Large corporations are often less likely to perceive a need for public job training resources, so coalitions need to go the extra mile to involve them.

The Detroit coalition also identified several programmatic lessons learned related to federal grants. Recipients of the grant do not have a streamlined process for collecting data. Along with the time consumption of creating an in-house system, the integration of data with co-recipients becomes an arduous task and prevents recipients from allocating more of their time to pursuing the rest of the scope of the grant. If the federal agency overseeing the grant were to provide a system for data collection to all grant recipients, it would be more cohesive for unifying the goals and metrics of the grant, and would prevent duplication of efforts across grantees. Lastly, when it comes to services, the U.S. Department of Commerce requested the Detroit region scale back funding that had been allocated to help remove barriers to work—such as lack of transportation or child care—for program participants prior to receiving the grant, because available funding was less than expected. Not having the funding for barrier removal was a missed opportunity to train and place economically disadvantaged job seekers in manufacturing career opportunities, locking them out of pathways that are proven to promote community prosperity.

How Chicago Used the Good Jobs Challenge Grant to Boost Pandemic Recovery While Meeting Manufacturers’ Long-Term Needs

The remarkable resiliency of the people of Chicago and their role in the city’s industrial prowess make it one of the top metropolitan areas in the nation—ranked third in the country among cities in terms of both population³⁷ and GDP³⁸. But that strength doesn’t mean the city struggled any less in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, which shook the foundation of metropolitan area economies worldwide.

Searching for support for its pandemic recovery and looking to fill the employee gaps identified by employers, the city applied for federal funding through the Good Jobs Challenge (GJC), a Biden–Harris administration funding opportunity designed to create sectoral training partnerships with the end goal of training and placing a diverse set of workers in critical industries. Chicago surveyed its rich economy, focusing on areas poised for growth, and decided to create partnerships around four industries: transportation, distribution, and logistics; information technology; health care; and manufacturing. Michael Thompson, a project director at the Cook County Bureau of Economic Development, says manufacturing was an obvious choice. He described it as the closest proxy to direct investment in community development of any sector because of the return to society and working families for every dollar invested, and so the Bureau of Economic Development’s engagement with GJC focused on manufacturing.

Manufacturing makes up about 10 percent of jobs in the Chicagoland economy³⁹ and represents an even larger share of Illinois’ gross state product. But aside from the unique challenges brought by the pandemic—including a reduced workforce due to illness and contagion prevention measures⁴⁰—manufacturing in the city continues to have other roadblocks to overcome to keep thriving. The workforce is aging: about 30 percent of manufacturing employees are 45 to 54 years old, and one out of four are over age 55. The area also has a need for talent. “At any given time we have at least 10,000 manufacturing openings,” Thompson said. A 2020 survey of over 1,000 Cook County manufacturers with more than fifty employees revealed that training and retaining a skilled workforce was a top priority.

As the county’s Bureau of Economic Development interacted with manufacturers, they drilled down into what specific skills were needed in the workforce and identified three skill gaps that became the focus of their projected Chicagoland GJC award. Those needs include skills such as metal machine equipment maintenance, CNC machining, and leadership training for incumbent workers (turning entry level employees into leaders and managers). They also highlighted another need, one that will lift up Chicago’s industrial textile manufacturing ecosystem: the first-ever industrial sewing credential, coming soon via a partnership between Cook County’s manufacturing stakeholders and the National Institute for Metalworking Skills (NIMS).

No One Was Starting from Scratch: Tapping Into Chicagoland’s Rich Manufacturing and Workforce Ecosystem to Build New Partnerships

The Cook County Bureau of Economic Development is pursuing its GJC ambitions in close partnership with key allies. As Thompson told us, “No one was starting from scratch, we worked with everyone locally who had a really strong level of expertise in workforce and manufacturing.” Prairie State College and Governors State University are helping with the incumbent worker leadership training and entry-level employee training. The National Institute for Metalworking Skills (NIMS) and Manufacturing Renaissance are helping the bureau break ground on new partnerships in the west side of the city and west suburban Cook County communities. NIMS designed company-specific training modules because, as Thompson learned,⁴¹“Welding at one company is not the same as welding at another company. The labor market data told us generally what skills are in demand, but what we have continuously found out is that every manufacturer’s production processes are unique.” Skills trainer Opportunity Advancement Innovation (OAI) is the bureau’s “backbone” organization for the manufacturing work focused on training in the South suburbs of Chicago (the Southland). Even county commissioners and local governments, such as the Village of Franklin Park, have played a role by attracting manufacturers to GJC grant-related events that may not have seen such a large industry attendance if only promoted by the county.

Other key players included participating companies who committed to hiring or training initiatives; community-based organizations who helped provide wrap-around social services to trainees; and the national nonprofit Jobs for the Future that helped the bureau navigate the requirements of the federal grant process.

Not Reinventing the Wheel: How a Successful Southland Model Laid the Framework for West Chicago

As Thompson said, the bureau and its partners weren’t starting from scratch.⁴² They had already seen success with a regional partnership targeting Chicago’s Southland, the Calumet Manufacturing Industry Sector Partnership. Formed in 2017, the bureau and manufacturing stakeholders built that partnership into a network of more than 100 manufacturing businesses, led by a steering group of ten companies and backed by community organizations. Within five years, the Calumet initiative had facilitated 300 full-time hires from its related training programs, connected 160 young adults with internships and helped seventy-five workers complete on-the-job training. With funds from the GJC, the bureau essentially took that same model, created more permanent infrastructure and staffing around it and replicated it in west side Chicago and the city’s western suburbs.

In interviews, Thompson and his colleagues couldn’t stress enough the important role NIMS played in the process of bringing early career and on-the-job training to workers at manufacturing companies in those areas. As Lisa Cockerham, a program manager at the bureau, made calls to manufacturing stakeholders, they confirmed for her that NIMS is the real deal. “Getting that validation helped confirm [NIMS’] role,” she said. “Hearing from people who actually went through their training for credentials and then seeing the excitement from manufacturers.… They knew it would make the employees more marketable [if they ever left the company] but it would also give them a way to measure and test the competencies the employees were supposed to gain through training,” she said.⁴³

Pride and Pain Points: What’s Gone Well, What’s Been Challenging for Chicagoland’s GJC Manufacturing Component

If you ask Thompson and Cockerham about what they’ve accomplished through the projected GJC grant work to date, they’ll tell you what makes them proud: creating partnerships that are employer-led, with employers committing to hiring or giving a boost in benefits to workers who undergo on-the-job training. And, overall, designing a workforce development system catered to west side Chicago and its environs that will live beyond the GJC grant period.

But the process hasn’t been without its challenges. Cockerham pointed out there wasn’t a data collection tool provided by the U.S. Economic Development Administration, meaning the onus had fallen to grantees because they had to invest time and resources to create their own data tracking and reporting methodologies. She also pointed out the challenge of delegating among so many partners who are accustomed to being leaders. Thompson noted how it will be hard to measure the true economic impact on businesses because employers typically were not tracking how much they spent on employee retention and training prior to the projected GJC partnership, meaning a before-and-after analysis could not be performed.

Thompson identified the biggest, high-level challenge: building new sector partnerships and then working toward design and adoption of a new training program among partners in just a few years. “You’re going to companies and you’re telling companies, ‘Every quarter, I want you to come to a room and meet with me and then government and education and other people, and talk about not just your talent needs but maybe industry barriers overall,’ and half the time we were doing that from a cold call,” he said. “It’s very hard to get a business to commit to that level of transparency, that level of partnership and communication, instantaneously.” If he could start over again, he said he would have preferred building those sector partnerships first in an initial phase, and as trust accumulates, switching over to the training component in a second phase. That would have helped with rapport and reduced any uncertainty that may have made some employers more reluctant to jump on board than others.

Lessons Learned and Policy Recommendations

The experiences from these three communities surfaced a set of generalizable lessons for place-based efforts tied to industrial policy investments. These lessons were gleaned from I&I interviews and technical assistance, and built on the themes of the first two I&I cohorts. The first part offers lessons learned for communities designing place-based initiatives in this context, and the second offers a set of recommendations for federal policymakers implementing industrial policy.

Recommendations for Communities Designing Future Place-Based Initiatives

1. Gear training to the appropriate stage of technology adoption.

I&I’s Detroit partners were focused on electric vehicle manufacturing, whose time is coming around the globe, with millions of EVs already on the road. However, the transformation is coming more slowly in Detroit’s manufacturing sector than in other nations, given how far behind the U.S. auto industry has been in pivoting to EVs, as well as interruptions to adoption, such as political polarization’s impact on government support and the lack of charging capacity for vehicle owners. However, job seekers—particularly those from historically excluded communities—cannot afford to wait for a job after they have made the investment in job training. As an alternative to training for a specific EV industry, I&I partners are training for skills—including in automation and robotics—giving trainees knowledge that can be applied to a broad range of industries. Trainees need employment with family-sustaining wages upon completion, and so this broader training approach not only enables their skills to be more versatile for an evolving labor market than training for a specialized industry where the jobs may not yet be available (such as training for applicable to auto industry jobs broadly rather than only electric vehicle jobs only), but also allows them to be poised to move into EV jobs when they come online.

2. Prioritize funding for barrier removal in talent development grants.

The American Institute for Research tracks youth and young adult workforce development programs and finds that embedding wraparound services, such as transportation and child care assistance, is vital and should be implemented at the beginning of program design.⁴⁴ In particular, I&I partners in Detroit saw the critical need for removing barriers to employment, such as lack of transportation and child care, and also for addressing issues such as criminal records and needing a driver’s license. Whether grants serve rural areas or cities with historically disadvantaged populations in the region, removing barriers is transformative and can be the difference between whether a worker can enroll in a high-demand job training program, or must stay home with their child(ren) due to unaffordable child care costs.

3. If you must go fast, go alone; but if you want to go far, go together.

Building a high-quality ecosystem requires engagement from multiple entities. Community colleges often house the training models that align to the employer-valued credentials. Employers must uphold job quality standards and training design elements⁴⁵ that will drive the recruitment and retention of workers. Community-based organizations provide the wraparound services for workers plagued by occupational segregation, homelessness, and poverty—and should be treated as valued stakeholders. Workers themselves are a critical part of the ecosystem, and will provide key information on what is and what is not working. Their voices can spearhead the design of pre-hire and incumbent worker training to ensure meaningful workers are on a pathway to professional advancement. A successful sector partnership will engage all of these entities—and others important to the ecosystem—in a way that facilitates collaboration. Economic mobility in a community is not done in a vacuum, and the success of workers is dependent on the collective success of the ecosystem.

4. Use communities of practice to replicate exemplary practices.

Starting from scratch is not necessary. This iteration of the Industry and Inclusion Project, building on the prior two cohorts, designed a community of practice in which all three partners were in close geographic proximity to each other (Illinois, Michigan, and Ohio). For example, conversations on transportation as a wraparound service for workers is a key topic among workforce intermediaries. Instead of spending time and energy on brainstorming novel solutions, I&I’s third cohort partners were able to learn what has already been done by members of previous cohorts in Buffalo, New York and Cleveland, Ohio, such as renting vans that transports trainees from the training center to industry partners. A virtual community of practice enables I&I cohort members to learn what is being done in another state without the associated travel costs of visiting. On a bimonthly basis, cohort members learned from the sticky workforce challenges in other states and co-created solutions, often referring to other communities who had successfully faced similar issues.

5. Design workforce policy with a human-centered approach.

Workers are human beings with lived experiences beyond the workplace, and may bring in a variety of skills, experiences, and in some cases, trauma. In manufacturing, this trauma may be more pronounced if workers are deterred from working in the industry due to a negative experience, such as a family member being injured and/or not receiving workers’ compensation, or if a factory closed in their community, impacting jobs and wealth generation and job stability. Designing talent development with a human-centered approach helps to ensure that workplaces are more inclusive, enables workers to feel seen and heard, and can provide psychological safety. For the Industry and Inclusion Project, this has meant bringing trauma-informed experts as trainers for I&I cohort members so their institutions can integrate and formally adopt key principles of this approach, as outlined by the Centers for Disease and Control.⁴⁶ I&I also partners with exemplar human-centered models in the country, such as the Northland Workforce Training Center in Buffalo, New York,⁴⁷ which, along with providing worker training for manufacturing and clean energy, also provides specialized counseling for refugee and immigrant trainees or those suffering from substance or alcohol abuse.

Recommendations for Federal Policymakers Implementing Future Industrial Policy

1. Institutionalize support for regional talent ecosystems.

The federal government should embed long-term funding mechanisms in its industrial policy going forward to support regional talent ecosystems as core infrastructure. Sustained investments in employer-led sector partnerships, community colleges, and workforce intermediaries would ensure that training systems remain responsive to local industrial demand and are not disbanded once short-term grants expire. Ongoing funding is available for certain types of training through the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) and state and federal higher education funding, but there is little ongoing funding for the ecosystem itself that supports success. One example of a program Congress could embed is the Recompete Pilot Program, a five-year grant competitively awarded to economically distressed communities to stimulate job creation.⁴⁸ Right now, this program remains in a pilot phase, which means the implementation is small scale. Budgets from the previous presidential administration⁴⁹ also proposed substantial investments in sectoral partnerships, but Congress has yet to commit regular funding for partnership development. Getting people into high-quality, high-wage jobs is a bipartisan win, and federal funding should support the kind of ecosystem building that can drive place-based initiatives over time.

2. Fund and formalize communities of practice across grantees.

The U.S. Economic Development Administration and the U.S. Department of Labor should build communities of practice into all place-based grant programs from the start, enabling real-time knowledge-sharing across awardees. These networks allow local leaders to troubleshoot common barriers, exchange effective models, and accelerate the adoption of practices such as trauma-informed instruction, employer co-design, and wraparound service integration. Dedicated facilitation and cross-site learning grants should be included in funding streams to strengthen institutional capacity and reduce duplication of effort. Regional coalitions in the Industry and Inclusion cohort simultaneously participated in federally supported communities of practice during their grant period of performance, and found cross pollination with other communities to be helpful in their design of job training programs.

3. Make wraparound services a required—and funded—element of workforce grants.

Services that remove barriers to program participation, such as transportation, child care, housing supports, and mental health care, must be treated as essential components of workforce training, not optional add-ons. All federally funded talent development initiatives—especially those targeting historically excluded communities—should include flexible dollars for wraparound supports, with grantees required to demonstrate integration of these services from the program design phase. An example of this was the CHIPS child care requirement spearheaded by the U.S. Department of Commerce, which required semiconductor manufacturers that applied for more than $150 million of CHIPS direct funding to create a plan for high-quality, affordable child care for facility and construction workers.⁵⁰ The requirement was intended to encourage and enable a more diverse group of people, such as women and low-income workers, to apply for and remain in CHIPS-related jobs. When wraparound services are designed with the input of workers, employers, legislatures, and grassroots organizers, the likelihood of building and retaining a diverse workforce grows, particularly for communities who rely on these services the most.

4. Design and provide a standardized infrastructure for data collection.

Federal agencies should create a robust infrastructure for data collection that all grantees can use to assess progress, including employer outcomes, and make technical assistance available on its use. Grantees’ expertise lies in designing workforce training, but they often have limited capacity for data collection. The majority of cohort members underscored they needed assistance with data collection, particularly with standardization when working with multiple partners in their workforce ecosystems. Place-based initiatives are likely to continue to be derived from diverse federal funders, such as the U.S. Departments of Energy, Commerce, Defense, and Labor. Communities participating in these initiatives would greatly benefit from a set of common metrics and infrastructure across funding agencies, including data on employment outcomes (such as retention, promotion, and wage gains) and also ecosystem metrics such as partnership development. By providing this infrastructure and technical assistance directly, federal funding agencies would prevent grantees from spending time to “reinvent the wheel” for data collection. And the funding agencies would benefit from higher-quality, easily comparable information on grantees’ progress and program outcomes.

5. Tie employer participation to job quality and hiring outcomes.

Federal place-based workforce grants should include strong employer accountability measures to ensure that employer partners are not only at the table, but delivering for workers. Participating employers should commit to meeting baseline standards for wages, benefits, career advancement, and hiring from training pipelines. Securing employment is insufficient for workers if participating employers have high-turnover rates and low-road employment strategies.⁵¹ Federal funding should be geared to incentivize and reward communities that are the most successful at raising job quality and placing participants in good jobs. Setting a higher bar for employers means accountability for furthering metrics of job quality, and that ensures public training dollars are achieving the promise of economic mobility.

Looking Ahead

The lessons emerging from the Industry and Inclusion project and the Biden–Harris administration’s place-based investments point to a clear truth: building an inclusive, resilient manufacturing economy requires more than capital and infrastructure—it requires intentional, ecosystem-driven workforce strategies that are grounded in local context and centered in equity. From Detroit to Chicago to Ohio, the most promising models combined employer engagement, community-based support systems, and targeted credentialing pipelines that reflect the evolving needs of twenty-first-century manufacturing. These initiatives show that high-quality training, barrier removal, and equitable design are not afterthoughts—they are preconditions for long-term industrial strength and regional prosperity.

As the federal government, states, and private industry prepare for the next wave of industrial investment, the work ahead must deepen—not dilute—this commitment. Future efforts should prioritize sustained support for sectoral partnerships, standardized data collection systems, and the scaling of proven practices through communities of practice. More than anything, the past four years have proven that when local actors are resourced, trusted, and connected, they deliver results—not just in workforce metrics, but in transforming how economic development is done.

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2. “Investing in America,” The White House, https://bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/IIA-REPORT-final.pdf.
3. Joseph Parilla, Glencora Haskins, and Mark Muro, “Seizing the Moment for Place-Based Economic Policy,” The Brookings Institution, May 2024, https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/BBBRC-compendium-may-2024-final3.pdf.
4. August Benzow, “Economic Renaissance or Fleeting Recovery? Left-Behind Counties See Boom in Jobs and Businesses Amid Widening Divides,” Economic Innovation Group, July 8, 2024, https://eig.org/left-behind-places/.
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9. “Regional Technology and Innovation Hubs (Tech Hubs),’’ U.S. Economic Development Administration, https://www.eda.gov/funding/programs/regional-technology-and-innovation-hubs.
10. “Regional Innovation Engines,’’ U.S. National Science Foundation, https://www.nsf.gov/funding/initiatives/regional-innovation-engines
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15. Girard Melancon, Michelle Burris, and Tanu Kumar, “Impactful Credentialing Checklist: Strengthening Community College Programs through an Equity Scorecard,” The Century Foundation, November 13, 2023, https://tcf.org/content/commentary/impactful-credentialing-checklist-strengthening-community-college-programs-through-an-equity-scorecard/.
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18. “Ohio Gross Domestic Product,” Ohio Department of Development, February 2022, https://dam.assets.ohio.gov/image/upload/development.ohio.gov/research/economy/Gross-Domestic-Product-of-Ohio.pdf.
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26. “About The Global Epicenter of Mobility or GEM,” GEM, https://gemdetroitregion.com/about/.
27. “Global Epicenter of Mobility Awarded $52.2 Million by The Build Back Better Regional Challenge,” Ann Arbor Spark, press release, September 7, 2022, https://annarborusa.org/news/global-epicenter-of-mobility-awarded-52-2-million-by-the-build-back-better-regional-challenge//.
28. Candice Williams, Christine Ferretti, and Charles E. Ramirez, “Why Amazon didn’t pick Detroit,” The Detroit News, January 18, 2025, https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/detroit-city/2018/01/18/amazon-passes-over-detroit-2nd-hq/1043515001/.
29. Jim Lynch, “Auto plants grew their workforces after transitioning to electric vehicle production,” The Regents of the University of Michigan, Office of the Vice President for Communications, September 17, 2024, https://news.umich.edu/auto-plants-grew-their-workforces-after-transitioning-to-electric-vehicle-production/#:~:text=%E2%80%9CWhat%20we%27re%20seeing%2C,practice%20known%20as%20vertical%20integration.
30. Ibid.
31. David Ferris and Hannah Northey, “How a trade war could move American EVs out of reach,” Politico, April 21, 2025, https://www.eenews.net/articles/how-a-trade-war-could-move-american-evs-out-of-reach/.
32. “Fact Sheet: No Worker Left Behind,” Michigan State Government, May 2010, http://employmentincentives.com/state_incentives/documents/Michigan/NWLB_Fact_Sheet_Final_203216_7.pdf#:~:text=The%20No%20Worker%20Left%20Behind%20free%20tuition,biotechnology%2C%20renewable%20energy%2C%20and%20other%20growing%20sectors.
33. “EV Jobs Academy works to power up a Michigan workforce,” Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy, March 27, 2023, https://www.michigan.gov/egle/newsroom/mi-environment/2023/03/27/ev-jobs-academy-works-to-power-up-a-michigan-workforce.
34. SEMCA, interview with authors, April 11, 2025.
35. “Quick Facts Detroit City, Michigan,” U.S. Census Bureau, https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/detroitcitymichigan/BZA115222.
36. SEMCA, interview and email correspondence with authors, May 16, 2025.
37. “Most Populous,” United States Census Bureau, https://www.census.gov/popclock/embed.php?component=populous.
38. “Regional Data,” U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis and U.S. Census, https://apps.bea.gov/itable/index.html?appid=70&stepnum=40&Major_Area=5&State=5&Area=XX&TableId=533&Statistic=1&Year=2023&YearBegin=-1&Year_End=-1&Unit_Of_Measure=Levels&Rank=1&Drill=1&nRange=5.
39. “Jobs and Wages in Chicago’s Industrial Corridors,” City of Chicago, last modified July 20, 2022, https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/dcd/supp_info/jobs-and-wages-in-chicago-s-industrial-corridors.htm.
40. Michael Maiello, “How COVID-19 Shocked both Supply and Demand,” Chicago Booth Review, May 14, 2020, https://www.chicagobooth.edu/review/how-covid-19-shocked-both-supply-demand.
41. Michael Thompson, interview with authors, April 9, 2025.
42. Ibid.
43. Lisa Cockerham, interview with authors, April 9, 2025.
44. Samia Amin, Sami Kitmitto, Kyle Fagan, and Candace Hesteret, “A Review of the Evidence on Youth and Young Adult Workforce Development Programming,” American Institutes for Research, June 2020, https://www.air.org/sites/default/files/2024-04/Review-on-Evidence-on-Youth-and-Young-Adult-Workforce-Development-Programming-June-2020.pdf.
45. “Statement on Good Jobs,” The Aspen Institute, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/programs/good-jobs-champions-group/.
46. “6 guiding principles to a trauma-informed approach,’’ Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, June 28, 2018, https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/56843.
47. “Services & Support,’’ Northland Workforce Training Center, https://northlandwtc.org/services-and-support/.
48. “Distressed Area Recompete Pilot Program (Recompete),” U.S. Economic Development Administration, https://www.eda.gov/funding/programs/recompete-pilot-program.
49. Jennifer Stiddard, Caroline Treschitta, Megan Evans, “What does the Presidential Budget Request mean for an inclusive economic recovery?” National Skills Coalition, May 4, 2022, https://nationalskillscoalition.org/blog/workforce-data/what-does-the-presidential-budget-request-mean-for-an-inclusive-economic-recovery/.
50. “CHIPS Child Care Requirement: How Equitable Implementation Can Promote Stable, Well-Compensated Early Childhood Jobs,” Center for the Study of Child Care Employment (CSCCE), IRLE at University of California Berkeley, May 24, 2023, https://cscce.berkeley.edu/publications/brief/chips-child-care-requirement/.
51. Emily McGrath and Michelle Burris, “Why Job Quality Is Critical to Successful Workforce Training,” The Century Foundation, April 9, 2025, https://tcf.org/content/commentary/why-job-quality-is-critical-to-successful-workforce-training/.

Tags: U.S. manufacturing, build back better, job creation