Santa Fe was the site on Monday for the National League of Cities Good Jobs, Great Cities Academy.
Santa Fe is one of 15 cities across the nation chosen for the partnership with the National League of Cities and the U.S. Department of Labor to accelerate city efforts to design, develop, and launch a workforce initiative to build pathways into good jobs.
Program Manager with the National League of Cities Mike Bartlett told attendees at the Santa Fe Convention Center legislation like the Inflation Reduction Act, the CHIPS Act, and the Infrastructure law are slated to create millions of jobs, but there needs to be a qualified and trained workforce to make that happen.
“The Bureau of Labor Statistics is projecting that over the next years labor force participation is expected to continue to fall from 62% to about 60%,” he said. “We’ve got a lot of jobs. There is no shortage of economic opportunity but we know that even despite these economic opportunities we have tremendous challenges connecting people to what are good jobs.”
Mayor Alan Webber says creating a trained workforce for the jobs of the present and future is critical for Santa Fe and northern New Mexico.
Webber says initiatives like Good Jobs, Great Cities addresses what he says is the underlying issue affecting the community of workforce development and fighting poverty.
Webber says it invests in people who are ready to work and connects them to the jobs that are here and will be in the future.