Revolutionize Our Workforce System
The Opportunity
The workforce system is simply not designed to meet the vastly different career, education, and training needs of all Detroiters. This is not an issue specifically isolated to Detroit. Despite the great work, commitment, and expertise of providers and organizations in Detroit, the issues we face are structural. Providers and staff are often hampered by policy restrictions, funding requirements, and contracts that at times allow little room for innovation or autonomy. It is time to augment and transform our workforce system.
Like many other cities across the country, our workforce system is siloed, underfunded, and designed by law and funder requirements to reward short-term outcomes that do not always put Detroiters on a path to prosperity. Residents are either excluded from opportunities because their path to a job will take longer, or placed into a job that doesn’t provide the income or quality job they deserve. In order to support a thriving city, we must equip everyone to participate fully in the labor market and co-design solutions alongside the residents we aim to serve.
While the next Mayor of Detroit has the opportunity to shape the strategy of the public workforce system, they can also use their convening power to bring all the organizations in the workforce ecosystem to work towards a shared vision and better leverage the existing resources within the city government.
We need to build on the progress made over the last decade to create a system that works for all Detroiters , regardless if they walk into a Detroit at Work career center or the workforce nonprofit in their neighborhood. To continue to transform our workforce system and make it a system that works for all Detroiters, we must:
#1. Adopt and resource a “No Wrong Door” approach that allows all Detroiters to access workforce, education and social services at all public workforce, adult education and social service centers.
For too many Detroiters, they bear the burden of traversing a myriad of social service, education, and workforce programs that are geographically spread out, require duplicative assessment and eligibility processes. For many Detroiters like high school youth facing school-to-career transitions or adults exiting from adult basic education programs, the incoherent web of social, workforce, and education services prevents them from reaching their goals. Too many Detroit residents are in positions where one unexpected bill or a reduction in wages can lead to catastrophic impacts on their livelihood, health, or housing. On the flipside, workforce, education, and social service organizations working to support Detroiters in search of economic stability and growth are too hampered by regulatory policies that dictate who should receive services, what services they can receive, and the amount of services that should be given. Exceptionally dedicated staff at these organizations face the ridiculously high expectations of knowing a complicated web of potential referral partners to send their clients to, and a lack of easily accessible funding to provide the emergency assistance their clients need. It is time for a worker and resident centered approach. We call on the next Mayor of Detroit to build on and learn from models like the CityLink Center in Cincinnati, which co-locates multiple organizations and streamlines the intake process and resources to holistically serve residents, or the Consumer Information Exchange in Illinois, which improves outcomes for people experiencing homelessness through a shared governance, data, and service delivery process between health and social service providers. We encourage the next Mayor to also learn from previous pilot project efforts at Detroit at Work that provided flexible barrier mitigation funds and establish a funding mechanism that could be deployed quickly, efficiently, and with no strings attached. The next Mayor of Detroit has the opportunity to advance a robust co-design process with residents to understand worker and resident needs and determine how to structure and support a web of aligned social service, education, and workforce programs. Together they should partner with residents, philanthropy, providers, advocates, city departments, and others to co-design a “no-wrong-door” approach that can seamlessly connect Detroiters with critical social, education, and workforce services. Central to this co-design process must be pathways for residents to have agency and power to inform and drive the design, policies, and services of this approach.
#2. Publicly share data across workforce programs and services in order to assess progress over time, identify gaps in the system, and provide transparency to Detroiters.
Currently providers, advocates, and residents are unable to monitor, track, or understand the employment, education, and support service provided to Detroiters. Following the lead of other cities like San Antonio and New York City, Detroit should become a model of transparency and accountability by reporting and evaluating the short and long-term career and income growth of residents served through their funded programs and services. The Mayor’s Workforce Development Board should report on data related to programs and services funded by both public and private funds that Detroit at Work manages on at least a quarterly basis, mirroring what other workforce boards across the country have already started. The design of this should be co-designed with the myriad of workforce service providers in our ecosystem and residents, and should not simply mirror federal reporting requirements. Data should include demographics like education levels, age, race, or district, wages, industry, credential attainment, supportive services provided and robust customer feedback. It should also include more contextual citywide data, like income, growth in home ownership, the number of Detroiters unemployed or out of the labor market, education attainment, and the number of residents returning from incarceration in prison or county jails. The Mayor’s Office should also report on hiring and permanency data from any corporation that has received a tax incentive over the last 10 years, including those required to hire Detroiters.
#3. Restructure the Downtown Development Authority Tax so money is helping meet the needs of Detroiters, not wealthy business owners.
Since 1976, the DDA has captured taxes and invested it into the growth of downtown Detroit and its businesses. It’s time to shift that allocation of funding back into serving the needs of Detroit residents, most of whom are locked out of the jobs and careers of the downtown Detroit businesses who have benefited from the DDA’s tax capture. Funding from the DDA tax could be better and more equitably leveraged as seed funding for other workforce projects, like the No Wrong Door approach, expansion of social enterprises, or emerging or promising models for testing, learning, and expansion. Funding for the DDA could support the built infrastructure for public transportation, affordable housing, or office to residential building conversions. We call on the next Mayor of Detroit to advance a process by which the DDA is restructured. Such a process should be co-created with residents, advocates, philanthropy and others to ensure that the future of the DDA meets Detroit resident’s needs first.
#4. Expand social enterprises across the city by providing capital and technical assistance.
Social enterprises are businesses that operate like a traditional business but prioritize a specific social outcome, like helping people overcome barriers to employment through real work opportunities, over generating profits. Employment focused social enterprises are a proven model to increase income for individuals in need of more supportive work environments and provide pathways into good careers. Detroit has a number of emerging and thriving social enterprises that are providing a double and triple bottom line impact for the city, but we need more. Research continues to demonstrate that social enterprises meet the needs of workers, and communities, reduce homelessness and gun violence, and have a social return on investment. Social enterprises often work with people returning from incarceration, youth, people experiencing homelessness, and others facing multiple barriers to employment. For these businesses to thrive and for Detroit to be an epicenter of social enterprise innovation and expansion, the City has a mandate to support and resource these dedicated entrepreneurs in the same way that other businesses are supported in the city. Like other cities and states, Detroit should advance procurement policies to allow for social enterprises to be more competitive when bidding on public contracts. Los Angeles, for example, codified the definition of social enterprises, opening up opportunities for social enterprises to bid on city contracts. Additionally, we call on the city to allow for loans and capital to be funneled to social enterprises to bolster the capacity of these businesses to expand in the marketplace. Similar to California and elsewhere, Detroit should dedicate resources to support technical assistance for emerging social enterprises.
#5. Advance a commitment to align the public workforce and homeless systems to ensure that Detroiters facing housing instability have access to quality jobs.
Research and direct experience bears out that housing stability is inextricably linked with economic justice. Many people who experience homelessness are working but not earning enough to keep a stable roof over their heads. Many people experiencing homelessness want to work, but face a myriad of barriers to securing employment and quality jobs. The workforce system and the homeless services system have shared goals to address the employment and income needs of people experiencing homelessness - despite this, the systems lack systemic coordination. For the workforce system, people experiencing homelessness are a priority population for services in statute. For the homeless services system, measures of success for the system include documenting increases in income by individuals who participate in programs. Moreover, Detroit simply does not have the number of shelter beds and other short-term housing solutions to needed to support residents facing housing insecurity. In December of 2024, for example, of the 2,506 intake calls Detroit’s Coordinated Entry System, 1,997 were placed on the shelter waitlist. This lack of housing resources means that too many Detroiters are at risk for experiencing hardship and life-threatening consequences; moreover, the shelter system is not designed to support residents’ housing needs. We urge the next Mayor of Detroit to build on work from the last few years to align the public workforce and homeless systems, support systems coordination with other supports like behavioral health, and better leverage the resources and expertise of each system to provide more holistic support to residents and address the root cause of the issue. We call on the next Mayor to look at efforts in Maryland, Illinois, and Los Angeles and other places to explore how to resource and enact stronger systems collaboration across the workforce and homelessness systems.
