Job growth in the Mahoning Valley is projected to explode over the next 10 years as projects led by large companies come to fruition, whether that’s an existing employer like Foxconn as it matures into the electric-vehicle manufacturing space, or any number of other companies yet to make an announcement regarding expansion or relocation.

The number of positions being talked about is in the multiple thousands, and should the expectation manifest into reality, it would provide a tremendous shot in the arm to the region, but it also would present a challenge — a pretty significant challenge, in fact.

“Should those companies stand up the jobs they are proposing … we are going to be in a scenario where our current companies are going to struggle to compete for the workforce that will be potentially depleted because of the job growth we are anticipated to see,” Michael McGiffin, president, Youngstown Warren Regional Chamber Foundation, said.

“The problem is we don’t have enough people.

“We realized we needed to do something about this. Otherwise, we’re going to be putting our local and our legacy companies in jeopardy. We are going to be poaching employees from one company to the next; there is going to be a wage war; there is going to be a benefit war; and we’re going to put our regional economic system in turmoil if we don’t increase the number of eligible workers in our workforce and in our community,” McGiffin said.

So began a combined effort that includes the Youngstown / Warren Regional Chamber, Eastgate Regional Council of Governments and others, including some philanthropic organizations, that targets growing the population of the region using the three R’s: retaining young people, returning homegrown talent and recruiting fresh faces, and receiving refugees and immigrants.

RETENTION

For decades, young people in the Valley have been fed a narrative that greener pastures exist elsewhere; that you should go somewhere else for school, go somewhere else to get a job, that you can do better for yourself elsewhere.

That needs to stop, McGiffin said, “because life is good here.”

To keep young people in the region, they need to be shown there are well-paying jobs and, in fact, there’s a coalition of local workforce-related agencies and educational institutions proving just that — that the area has the jobs.

Also part of the equation is quality of life, and there’s a marketing campaign planned to show “how good life is here and what the opportunities are,” McGiffin said, from the low cost of living, job growth and robust arts, culture and food scenes that all “blend together in this positive equation of a good life.”

RETURN / RECRUIT

The similar concepts aim to reach those people who already have a connection to the region — those people born and raised in the Valley, but for one reason or another left — and persuade them to return; and to convince those living elsewhere to relocate to the Valley.

Tools like search engine optimization, job search websites like LinkedIn and partnerships with local media, as well as the workforce coalition, can be used to spread the word of the positive job and other attributes of the region.

“We need to, frankly, move some people here,” McGiffin said.

RECEIVE

This endeavor is perhaps the most challenging and complicated. At the moment, the chamber is in the early stages of developing partnerships with local and national organizations, including Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, Catholic Charities USA and the Youngstown Area Jewish Federation on ways to welcome and keep refugees and immigrants.

Lee Williams is a Valley native and chief program officer for LIRS, based in Baltimore, one of 10 national nonprofit agencies that partner with the U.S. government to resettle refugees across the nation. Catholic Charities is another.

LIRS has the second largest geographic network, resettling people in 52 communities across the U.S., including Columbus, where it partners with Ethiopian Tewahedo Social Services. LIRS also is the third largest in terms of number of people welcoming through the admissions program per year.

“Our job is to get people to self-sufficiency as quickly as possible. The definition we use for this is that when people arrive, they have safe and affordable housing, the kids are in school and the adults are gainfully employed and earning sufficient income so they are not tapping into other cash benefits,” Williams said.

The goal for that to happen is 180 to 240 days.

The average time it takes for a person to be identified for potential resettlement and entry in the U.S. is 18 to 24 months.

“During that time, these candidates are going through ongoing security vetting through the FBI, the Department of Defense, National Security Agency, a number of different government agencies. And they are also having their health checked, etc., so they are by far the most vetted individuals coming into the United States, either as a visitor or those getting a Visa coming to the U.S. as immigrants,” Williams said.

Refugee admissions need a public-private partnership, Williams said. Some public dollars are afforded for the initial resettlement period, “but successful resettlement in a community cannot happen without community awareness and community participation,” he said.

LIRS has a formal process when it’s considering a new resettlement site that includes community consultations with leaders at the local and state levels, with schools, with health care systems, employers, police and other service providers.

There are also conversations about culture and capacity, about how things would work, and about how to build interest and engage other community entities and people in the process.

“We are looking at what is the employment rate, what are the industries available, is there public transportation, how is housing?” Williams said. “All of these factors are taken into account prior to.”

The service has many success stories, including in Erie, Pa., where a resettlement effort has helped stabilize the community’s population. People who relocated there have set up many new businesses and helped revitalize the downtown area.

Likewise, the North Hill neighborhood of Akron has been revitalized by refugees. Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Detroit, St. Louis and Buffalo also have vibrant resettlement programs.

“These are all communities that suffered during the ’70s with a decline in industry, and they are working hard to repopulate and stabilize and grow the population,” he said.

The bottom line is, “it really has to be a whole community effort,” Williams said Aug. 31 at the regional chamber’s Salute to Business event, where he took part in a panel discussion. “It’s great to see the chamber is working with a number of you on developing a strategy on how to repopulate the area.”

It’s estimated by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees — the UN Refugee Agency — there are 108.4 million forcibly displaced people, of which 62.5 million are considered internally displaced and 35.3 million are refugees.

Forcibly displaced people are the people who had to flee their homes. Internally displaced people fled their home or community, but live elsewhere in the same country and refugees are those people who fled their country to seek safety elsewhere.

The number designated for entry in 2023 into the U.S. was 125,000. Next year, it should be around 175,000.

HEADWINDS

The projected growth in jobs is happening at a time when the region is facing significant headwinds.

The Youngstown-Warren area, which has rich ties to immigration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as eastern and southern European residents immigrated to work in the Valley’s mills and factories, has lost an average of seven people per day over the last 50 years, Lisa Long, of the Youngstown Area Jewish Federation, said.

Long, the financial resource development director for the federation, led the discussion with Williams at the chamber event.

She noted Youngstown was built to handle a population of 200,000 with the city, but today the population is less than 60,000. Warren, likewise, has a population of about 40,000 people — 30,000 less than its historical peak, she said.

She also noted state jobs numbers that showed in April 2023, Ohio had 389,000 unfilled jobs, which had 194,000 people receiving unemployment in July 2023, a rate of 3.3%.

That means there’s a workforce shortage.

Demographically in the U.S., the birth rate is below the maintenance rate, “so in other words, there aren’t enough kids being born to maintain the same level of population in the United States,” Williams said.

In addition, by 2020 about 20%of the population will be 65 or older and out of the workforce.

On the other hand, 78% of people who come to the U.S. as immigrants fall within the working ages of 18 to 64, “so you have this great number of people who are coming and ready to join the workforce or are in the workforce, and that is versus 49% of the U.S.-born population who are within that age range right now,” Williams said.

LOCAL EFFORT

Supporters of the regional chamber’s effort, either financially or otherwise, include the Gelbman Foundation, Thomases Family Fund, Trumbull Industries, Western Reserve Port Authority, Eastgate Regional Council of Governments, PNC Foundation & Charitable Trusts, Penn Northwest Development and Avalon Holdings.

Eastgate has folded the repopulation effort into a grant request it plans to make to the state for between $125 million and $140 million. A portion of the funding would be used for a recruitment center — a place with resources to help the new residents acclimate better to the region.

The resources could range from help with banking and education to housing and transportation, Jim Kinnick, executive director of Eastgate, said.

Concurrently, Eastgate and a consultant have begun a housing assessment that will help shape a housing strategy for the region.

After all, people who fill the jobs that are expected to be created will need a place to live, and housing, or lack thereof, is an issue in the Valley.

“We heard from our communities that housing is a problem,” Justin Mondok, Eastgate’s director of planning & development, said. “They don’t know where to start; they don’t know where to look. We are trying to set that foundation so our communities have a solid base.”

This story, photo and graphic previously ran in Valley Business magazine.