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San Antonio’s sales-tax-funded job training program known as Ready to Work has placed 4,300 people in new careers since it began during the pandemic. But now that its funding source has ended as planned, the program will stop taking new applicants in 2029.
SA Ready to Work began as a plan to address a skills gap and lost jobs as a result of the pandemic. In 2020, an expiring one-eighth of a cent sales tax that was for aquifer protection was reallocated by voters to first fund Ready to Work until 2026 and then change to fund VIA Metropolitan Transit.
Since its inception in 2021, Ready to Work has collected $235 million in that sales tax and will not collect anymore as of Dec. 31 of last year. Ready to Work expects to spend all of that by the year 2030 and hopefully place upwards of 15,000 people in new jobs.
On Monday Executive Director of Workforce Development Mike Ramsey told members of the city council’s Workforce Development Committee that when the program started training three years ago there were about 93 people completing training per month, now that’s 258 completionists per month.
“We averaged about 56 job placements per month. Now we're right at 200 job placements a month in the last 12 months. A 255% increase is a testament to the hard work of our partners who are implementing the Ready to Work program and serving our residents every day,” he said.
The program provides training in fields like aerospace manufacturing, construction, cyber security, education, professional services, health care, and transportation. Ready to Work offers connections to certificates, GEDs, associate degrees, and bachelor's degrees.
In all, about 15,000 people have started the training program and about 62% finish it to completion.
District 9 Councilwoman Misty Spears asked about why there is a gap in enrollment versus completion.
Ramsey said that completion goal is to get to 70% and some of the larger gap at the moment is due to many participants still completing their training, but others are unable to finish for various reasons.
“We continue to work with our participants to provide the resources and support to get them across that finish line. But life is happening. That's this target population that we're facing. The smallest thing can knock them off course. (That) is why we try so hard to provide those emergency assistance dollars to make sure that that doesn't happen,” he said.
Spears asked which industry has the largest mismatch program completionists where finding a job was difficult.
Ramsey said IT. “We have a mismatch between what our employers are looking for and what's coming out of the pipeline. That's the simplest answer to that. They want people with degrees and experience. We don't have that in Ready to Work,” he said.
Ready to Work provides emergency assistance funds to help pay for childcare, transportation and groceries among other factors. Each participant has up to $1,500 in emergency funds.
For the entire program about 6,500 have completed training and 4,300 have found jobs with the remaining — about 2,100 — still in job search. About 60% of program completionists have found a job within six months and 73% within a year.
Ramsey added that once a job is secured, the average salary is about $45,000, which is an increase of $33,000 for some of the program participants.
