Last week, JP Morgan Chase & Co. announced the launch of its New Skills for Youth initiative, a global, five-year, $75 million plan to expand career-focused education. It is partnering with the Council of Chief State School Officers and the National Association of State Directors of Career Technical Education Consortium to provide select state and local partnerships with planning and implementation funds to expand and create in-school career pathways for high-wage jobs. It will also be working to research and document innovative community efforts to increase postsecondary credential attainment throughout the country in order to develop new programs and policy recommendations. Though this initiative will focus on in-school career pathways, JP Morgan Chase & Co. hopes to decrease the number of 16 to 24-year-old young adults who are out of school and work, while simultaneously helping businesses strengthen their workforces with high-skilled, talented, young workers.
As JobsFirstNYC works to strengthen the public workforce system and align education and talent development with employment demand for out-of-school and out-of-work young New Yorkers, we applaud these new investments. We believe that the success of this initiative could have an impact on the inflow of youth into the out-of-school, out-of-work population from K-12 education. Furthermore, we believe New Skills for Youth has the potential to be greatly beneficial to young people in some of New York City’s most under-resourced communities, such as the South Bronx, where high school graduation rates are as low as 54%.
JobsFirstNYC is a proud partner with JP Morgan Chase & Co. on a number of initiatives. JP Morgan Chase & Co. is a strong supporter of our Young Adult Sectoral Employment Project (YASEP), through the New Skills at Work initiative, and has been supportive of the Lower Eastside Employment Network (LESEN). It was also an inaugural funder of the Bronx Opportunity Network. Click here to learn more about JP Morgan Chase & Co. and the New Skills for Youth initiative.
