An article by Johnny Magdaleno which was published in Next City last month offers reactions by representatives from the Workers Defense Project and Workforce Solutions Capital Area to a report by personal finance website NerdWallet which listed Austin, Texas as “the best place to search for a job in 2017.”
The Austin area is indeed growing its employment opportunities in technical fields with the opening of Apple’s new campus and the promised funding by Microsoft, Google, and IBM for internships for low-income job seekers and veterans through the TechHire initiative.
However, workers in the construction, restaurant, and other service industries are not all finding the same job growth opportunities. The Next City article quotes Bo Delp of the Workers Defense Project:
“I’m sure there are people who come to Austin who are making a lot of money, but when it comes to construction, construction workers who build Austin just can’t afford to live in the city anymore.”
Tiffany Daniels of the workforce development organization Workforce Solutions Capital Area is also quoted:
“’It’s kind of a two-edged sword for us,’ she says, regarding the NerdWallet ranking. ‘It’s one of the best cities in the nation if you’re looking for work, but that’s a difficult ranking to explain to someone here who’s been out of work for a while.’”
Read the Next City article for more insight into the workforce issues facing Austin and the rest of the state.
Next City is an online publication covering social, economic and environmental change in cities, with a vison to inspire cities toward a more sustainable, equitable future.
