The Challenge

Across Greater Philadelphia and New Jersey, employers say they cannot fill roles and residents say they cannot find work that pays enough to build a life on. Both are true at once, and the distance between them is where the region's workforce system keeps failing. Training programs run disconnected from actual hiring. Credentials are earned that employers do not recognise or reward. And the practical barriers that decide whether someone can hold a job at all — transportation, childcare, a criminal record, a licensing rule, an unpredictable schedule — sit outside the remit of almost every program designed to help.