WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--JPMorgan Chase & Co. today announced a more than $8.6 million commitment to help fill well-paying U.S. healthcare jobs by providing job seekers with critical skills that are in high demand but currently hard to find. As part of the firm’s $325 million global investment in skills development, this nationwide effort will provide lower-income Americans with the economic mobility to move into the middle class while helping healthcare organizations to better serve the increasing number of Americans seeking healthcare services.
“Through conversations with clients and partners, JPMorgan Chase has a unique vantage point for understanding how to address challenges healthcare organizations are facing when trying to find skilled workers and better serve patients,” said Chauncy Lennon, Head of Workforce Initiatives, JPMorgan Chase. “By investing in skills training solutions to fill well-paying, high-demand healthcare jobs, we’re not just providing individuals with economic opportunity, but helping to improve entire communities and the U.S. economy.”
Health care is the fastest-growing industry, nationally, with employment estimated to grow by 19 percent from 2014 to 2024, adding 2.3 million new jobs. But many of these jobs are expected to go unfilled unless job seekers have certain skills. The increased need for skills-driven healthcare jobs can be attributed to various factors including an aging population, including over 44 million Baby Boomers that will rely more heavily on health care services as well as a shift in how healthcare is provided from curative to preventative care. Rapidly changing technology has also required job seekers to secure necessary training to help them secure middle skill jobs—those that require more education and training than a high school diploma but less than a four-year college degree.
JPMorgan Chase aims to giving more workers, including lower-income people who are underemployed, a chance at good, well-paying careers by providing the necessary capital and technical support to local community colleges, training partners and research organizations that are doing innovative work to fill these vital middle skill jobs. Specifically, JPMorgan Chase’s grants will include three areas of focus:
- Collaborative Partnerships in Training and Workforce Alignment: Training workers for advancement is one way health care employers create middle skill pipelines so the firm has partnered with innovative organizations to build career pathways for in-demand jobs to better prepare the workforce through comprehensive training programs.
- Apprenticeships: Combining paid on-the-job training with classroom-based learning leads to better employment outcomes for individuals and helps employers build a pipeline of skilled talent. JPMorgan Chase is supporting innovative partnerships that are developing promising new apprenticeship models in some of the highest demand healthcare occupations.
- Data-Driven Hiring Solutions: Using accurate and timely data-driven research can help the private sector, academic, and philanthropic communities to better understand the barriers that employers and job seekers face. Better data will lead to better long-term outcomes for individuals and the widespread economy. For example, recent JPMorgan Chase reports found that Chicago and Detroit have about 14,500 and 2,600 annual middle skill healthcare jobs, respectively that need to be filled. Each city has expressed concern about finding qualified, trained workers for these well-paying positions.
Middle skill jobs provide higher wages and can set workers on a career pathway while improving job security and satisfaction. The increased demand for health care services, changes to the structure of health care delivery, and efforts to control costs affect employment in the health care workforce at all skill levels. These trends suggest healthcare is a promising sector for initiatives focused on developing a strong pipeline to move lower-skilled workers into middle skill jobs.
JPMorgan Chase’s new multimillion dollar commitment to strengthening the healthcare workforce will support the following organizations and efforts:
- Multiple Chicago area workforce grants (Chicago, Illinois) - $1,050,000. Four area healthcare organizations received new funding from JPMorgan Chase including Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago ($300,000), Rush University Medical Center ($100,000), Instituto Del Progreso Latino ($250,000), and One Million Degrees ($400,000). These investments focus on addressing the middle-skills employment gap in Chicago’s healthcare sector by partnering with various groups to recruit and train individuals interested in high-demand healthcare careers. This builds on the work already being done by the Advocate Charitable Foundation to provide access for under-employed workers to clinical, work-based learning, and paid internships at Advocate sites across the Chicago metro area, positioning graduates into higher-paying jobs with longer term career paths within the healthcare industry. The Advocate’s second class graduates on April 20 of this year.
“We partner with middle and high schools from low and middle-income neighborhoods in order to prepare students from those neighborhoods for jobs in medicine, nursing, Medical Assistant and Medical Coding,” said Maria Rivera, Director of Workforce Programs, Lurie Children’s. “This year we forged a new partnership with Malcolm X College as well to provide clinical experience to nursing students. As the healthcare industry grows in Chicago, programs like this one help us make sure jobs are filled and staff is properly trained to deliver high quality care. Thanks to JPMorgan Chase for helping make this possible.”
- H-CAP (Washington, DC) - $1,000,000. H-CAP is a national labor/management organization of SEIU union locals and healthcare employers who are partnering to develop national standards and guidelines for Registered Apprenticeships (RA) by coordinating across regions with key groups to convene a national conversation and opening the door to this model in licensed healthcare occupations. Working with union and employer partners, the group works to meet the needs in current and emerging healthcare occupations by sharing best practices in workforce development and planning, aligning healthcare professional education with industry needs, addressing changes in healthcare technology, and developing programs that combine career advancement with quality outcomes. Specifically, the group aims to implement RA programs in at least five states (CA, CT, MA, NY, and PA) for Advanced Homecare Workers, Behavioral, Health Workers/Technicians, Community Health Workers, and Medical Coding.
“With help from JPMorgan Chase we are working to transform healthcare workforce education policies to better assist in providing quality care, developing talent solutions for employers, and creating pathways for employees to learn the critical thinking skills they need in a dynamic and changing industry,” said Daniel Bustillo, Director, H-CAP. “We will promote innovation and quality in the healthcare workforce by fostering the development of national industry standards for healthcare apprenticeships.”
- Northwell Health (New York City, NY) $750,000. Northwell Health is the largest clinically-integrated healthcare network in New York State, with 21 hospitals, a patient base of eight million and has made a commitment to providing continuous learning opportunities for staff to acquire the knowledge and skills they need to support their strategic and patient care goals. To address the need for middle skill employees and the related necessity for residents of lower-income communities to find pathways to economic security, Northwell developed a pilot program to train and teach community healthcare workers, outreach associates and health coaches. The program provides community members with entry-level job opportunities with clear pathways for upward mobility. This pilot tests a new model for job training, one that is ultimately sustainable and a model for healthcare worker training and advancement on a larger scale.
“Our collaboration with JPMorgan Chase helps us fulfill our mission of improving the health of the communities by building a stronger economic future for individuals and their families through long-term employment in New York’s healthcare industry,” said Michael J. Dowling, President and CEO, Northwell Health. “Through this new training and teaching model, we will be able to prepare the health care workforce of tomorrow, offering solid career opportunities in one of the country’s most rapidly evolving industries.”
- Seton Healthcare Family (Seton) (Austin, Texas) - $730,000. Seton is part of Ascension, the largest nonprofit health system in the U.S. and the world’s largest Catholic health system. The largest private healthcare employer in Central Texas with approximately 12,500 employees, Seton is working to support the development of an employment pipeline for lower-income Greater Austin community residents, to build a pilot initiative to create career pathways within Seton for current frontline healthcare workers, and to create the internal and external capacity for developing a long-term strategic focus on workforce development.
“Seton will use this generous funding from JPMorgan Chase to develop creative ways to prepare people for high-demand health care careers specific to our community,” said Jesus Garza, President and CEO, Seton. “Rapid population growth makes it imperative to build the local health care workforce, and create pathways for career advancement to ensure we’re able to retain workers locally.”
- National Employment Law Project (New York City, New York) - $250,000. NELP is partnering with the Safer Foundation on a pilot project in the Bay Area, Cleveland and Dallas Fort-Worth to engage healthcare employers and workforce development organizations to explore hiring practices, share best practices, and build a foundation for advancing employment opportunities for people with criminal records in pilot communities. Due to limited information available on the experiences of employers that have employed individuals with criminal records, related hiring policies haven’t progressed. This program, which resulted in the production of “A Healthcare Employer Guide to Hiring People with Arrest and Conviction Records,” will lay the groundwork for educating employers on the cost and benefits associated with hiring and employing people with criminal records as compared to other workers.
“One in three adults in the U.S. have an arrest or conviction record and current hiring practices in the healthcare industry create significant employment barriers for those people,” said Christine L. Owens, Executive Director, National Employment Law Project. “With employment in the healthcare industry expanding every day, it’s time to update our human resources policies using new data to not only ensure those individuals have a chance to get back on their feet but address the ever-growing healthcare workforce shortage.”
- Foundation for the Seattle Colleges (Seattle, Washington) - $240,000. The Seattle Colleges District (SCD) comprises the largest community college system in Washington, serving more than 45,000 nontraditional students with programs in workforce education and training, career-focused bachelor's degrees, and academic transfer degrees. In order to help meet the demand for middle skill workforce, this program aims to place well-trained students who previously been un/underemployed into high-demand healthcare jobs as medical assistants, medical informatics specialists, and medical cyber security technicians by launching three degree programs that incorporate alternative instruction modalities to accommodate the demands of today's students, including online, hybrid, evening and weekend courses. In addition to placing students, this will assist employers in filling thousands of jobs due a shortage of qualified workers.
“Our ongoing partnership with JPMorgan Chase has allowed us to make tremendous strides,” said Malcolm Grothe, PhD, Associate Vice Chancellor, Workforce and Economic Development, Seattle Colleges. “Medical assistants and cyber security techs serve very important roles in our healthcare facilities and building a pathway to make sure their roles are filled is not only good news for their futures, it improves the overall quality of health care in our region.”
- Employ Milwaukee (Milwaukee, Wisconsin) - $150,000. Employ Milwaukee is the largest workforce investment board in Wisconsin, and has collaborated with the state’s five health systems that collectively employ 50,000 to collaborate on an industry-wide employment strategy. The program aims to deepen the connection between employers and community-based organizations, and has worked with the founding partners to commit to hiring 500 community residents from underserved zip codes, to increase diversity in their healthcare system writ large, and to build collective impact and greater collaboration among community-based organization engaged in workforce efforts.
“JPMorgan Chase was the first non-health system to provide funding for our demand-driven healthcare initiative in Milwaukee,” said Earl Buford, CEO of Employ Milwaukee. “Together we are working to make sure there is a steady and diverse pipeline of candidates to fill jobs in this high-growth industry.”
- The Urban Institute (Washington, DC). The Urban Institute is a nonprofit group that conducts research and offers evidence-based solutions to improve lives and strengthen communities across the world. Urban conducted a study to better understand what innovative practices healthcare employers are using to meet their need for middle skill healthcare workers while also preparing lower-skill employees to fill these jobs. They examined the strategies of up to 10 large healthcare employers seeking to improve access to skills training in the healthcare industry. The public-available research will be used to inform new initiatives and replicate successful existing efforts to help meet the employer need to boost the middle skill healthcare workforce.
“JPMorgan Chase has dedicated funding to research that helps workforce organizations better understand the problems facing employers in the healthcare industry,” said Pamela Loprest, Senior Fellow, Urban Institute. “Our research partnership is helping to highlight the key roles some employers already play in building worker skills and how to better allocate resources to prepare job seekers with the training they need to enter well-paying healthcare careers.”
Other recipients include:
- (Idaho) College of Western Idaho Foundation - $45,000
- (California) Jewish Vocational Service Los Angeles - $75,000
- (California) Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce Foundation - $155,000
- (California) Telacu Education Foundation - $50,000
- (California) Bay Area Council Foundation - $200,000
- (California) Valley Vision - $150,000
- (California) Center for Employment Training - $100,000
- (California) Unity Council - $100,000
- (Louisiana) Monroe Chamber of Commerce - $200,000
- (New York) East Harlem Employment Service, Inc./Strive International, Inc. - $400,000
- (New York) New York Alliance for Careers in Healthcare - $235,000
- (New York) Phipps Neighborhoods, Inc. - $1,000,000
- (Washington) Spokane Area Workforce Development Council - $200,000
- (Washington) The Seattle Foundation/SkillUp - $500,000
Through several targeted philanthropic initiatives, the firm is investing over $325 million in skills development around the world. In addition to a $75 million New Skills for Youth initiative, these investments include a separate five-year, $250 million global initiative called New Skills at Work to help fill vital positions for employers and provide adult workers with a real and tangible pathway to economic opportunity, as well as a $5.8 million effort to support summer youth employment programs for youth around the country.
About JPMorgan Chase
JPMorgan Chase & Co. is a leading global financial services firm with assets of $2.5 trillion and operations worldwide. The Firm is a leader in investment banking, financial services for consumers and small businesses, commercial banking, financial transaction processing, and asset management. A component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, JPMorgan Chase & Co. serves millions of consumers in the United States and many of the world's most prominent corporate, institutional and government clients under its J.P. Morgan and Chase brands. Information about JPMorgan Chase & Co. is available at www.jpmorganchase.com.
