Good Jobs, Great Cities

City leaders are presented with a once-in-a-generation opportunity to invest in their communities thanks to the Biden-Harris Administration’s historic federal investments in infrastructure, clean energy, and advanced manufacturing through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Achieving the promise of such investments will require a skilled and ready workforce to build America’s next-generation infrastructure and economy.

City leaders are well-positioned to act as convenors, advocates and innovators catalyzing stronger collaboration amongst local governments, businesses, education and training providers, local Workforce Development Boards (WDBs), labor unions, labor-management partnerships, faith-based organizations, philanthropy and other community-based organizations.

The Siemens Foundation is a key partner in NLC’s workforce development initiatives. Its support is imperative to the success of the Good Jobs, Great Cities programs and directly impacts the economic futures of residents in participating cities across the country.

The Good Jobs, Great Cities Academy

The Good Jobs, Great Cities Academy includes 16 cities working throughout 2023 and 2024 to develop innovative and scalable city-supported solutions that upskill and reskill workers into quality, high-demand jobs in infrastructure, clean energy, and advanced manufacturing jobs made possible by new federal investments, with a focus on supporting residents from historically underserved and underrepresented communities in order to address key shortcomings in their education and workforce ecosystem.

Academy cities are working closely with their employers, workforce development boards, and other cross-sector partners to take bold and innovative actions to build strong on-ramps into in-demand infrastructure occupations for workers facing barriers to career success. For example, such city partnerships will take action to launch pre-apprenticeship programs, expand Registered Apprenticeship into new sectors, design a comprehensive youth strategy for a city, or develop a regional sector partnership for a growing industry.

Cities participating in the Good Jobs, Great Cities Academy will benefit from the unique opportunity to engage with NLC, USDOL, other federal agencies, national thought leaders and their peer cities to:

Identify and convene employers and other stakeholders within a targeted subsector relating to infrastructure, clean energy, or advanced manufacturing
Identify and address gaps and/or shortcomings in their education and workforce ecosystem, allowing them to develop new, or scale existing successful initiatives
Implement strategies that ensure infrastructure, clean energy, and advanced manufacturing career opportunities are high-quality and support long term economic vitality in communities
Be better positioned to address the multi-faceted structural issues many groups of workers face (including opportunity youth, women, workers of color, Indigenous workers, workers in rural communities, justice impacted individuals, veterans, parenting workers, etc.) in accessing good jobs, and connect such workers to equitable and meaningful postsecondary and workforce opportunities;
Learn how to effectively leverage and allocate funds and other resources to support their goals for addressing their workforce needs
Strengthen policy and practice by intentionally building connections to supportive services for workers, and connecting to the care economy (including childcare, healthcare and mental health as key supports for workers)

Selected Cities

Cities selected for the Academy include:

Birmingham, AL
Chattanooga, TN
Duluth, MN
Fort Lauderdale, FL
Frederick, MD
Jamestown, NY
Kokomo, IN
Lansing, MI

Missoula, MT
Monroe, NC
Newark, NJ
San Antonio, TX
Santa Fe, NM
Saint Louis, MO
Tacoma, WA
Tempe, AZ

The Good Jobs, great Cities Learning Network

To provide broad support to cities dedicated to the goals and objectives of Good Jobs, Great Cities, the GJGC Learning Network will support an additional 17 cities by providing opportunities to learn from their peers and other national resource providers as they build a strong local ecosystem for workforce development. This will include participation in quarterly networking calls, and ready access to NLC and DOL tools and resources to accelerate their efforts to promote workforce success in key local industries.

Cities selected for the Learning Network include: