Jobless Steered To New Sectors In Pandemic

With roughly 6,000 New Haveners filing for continued unemployment amid the pandemic, agencies are directing more workers into telehealth and nursing assistant jobs — and fewer into Covid-stymied sectors like hospitality and higher ed.

Workforce Alliance President William Villano and New Haven Works Executive Director Melissa Mason gave those updates during the latest monthly meeting of the city’s Development Commission.

The hourlong virtual meeting took place online via Zoom.

The entirety of the public meeting was focused on the job training, networking, resume building, and other employment-related support services that Workforce Alliance and New Haven Works provide for unemployed and underemployed New Haveners.

The two agency heads described how their work has changed over the past 10 months as the Covid-19 pandemic has upended large swaths of the economy, plunged thousands onto the unemployment rolls, and kept many more stuck at home, trying to find or keep a job on their computer or by phone.

Their presentation came as New Haven’s economy remains in a precarious spot.

City Economic Development Administrator Michael Piscitelli (pictured) said at Wednesday’s meeting that the city’s continued unemployment claims appear to have flattened out at around 5,700 to 6,000 a week, with another roughly 185 new local unemployment claims filed with the state every week.

He said that 16 percent of the city’s jobs are in leisure and hospitality, and another 24 percent in higher education — two sectors that have been hit particularly hard by a pandemic that has largely shuttered hotels, theaters, and concert venues, and has resulted in hiring freezes at many colleges and universities.

Villano added that, when the federally-backed extension to state unemployment funding expires later this spring, roughly 185,000 Connecticut residents could come off of unemployment nearly all at once, flooding the market with people in desperate need of work and with little state safety net behind them.

“That’s going to be a challenge for us all to serve that population,” he said.

City Economic Development Officer Carlos Eyzaguirre described as sobering that the reminder of ​“this cliff that’s coming. It’s really hard to contemplate, and it’s going to be the big challenge of the next year.”

Main Challenges: Academics, Transportation

Villano said that Workforce Alliance, which was founded four decades ago, is one of five workforce boards in the state that is charged with administering federal and state job training dollars in the region.

It covers 30 towns, from Milford to Middletown, with 40 percent of its ​“customer base” in New Haven.

Villano’s agency works with people entering the workforce, those without much prior work experience, and those who have been displaced and need to get back to work and change careers. They also work with schools systems and nonprofits on youth programming, and with employers in and outside of the region who are in need of bulking up their workforce.

He said Workforce Alliance worked with Amazon to host various hiring events when that company opened an outpost in North Haven. He said his agency referred roughly 1,500 people to Amazon, roughly 1,000 of whom were ultimately picked up and hired.

One of its four career centers is on Ella T. Grasso Boulevard, right near New Haven Adult Education. ​“We have 16,000 people come through hte centers each year, including 6,000 to 8,000 in New Haven,” he said.

Before the pandemic hit, Villano said, his agency did a lot of work in hospitality.

“There were a number of hotels, some small, some boutique, that were in the process of coming online” or had already opened. Workforce Alliance would help connect prospective employees with jobs ranging from housekeepers to front desk to office work. ​“The pandemic basically decimated” that sector of the economy.

Workforce Alliance saw an uptick in manufacturing jobs in the region in recent years. Villano said the agency has continued to work with area manufacturers as they transitioned during the pandemic towards looking for employees to help make personal protective equipment like face masks and shields, and even ventilators.

“And there are always openings in healthcare,” he said. Villano said Workforce Alliance was able to get some of the state’s federal CARES Act money to conduct trainings in IT, transportation and logistics, and certified nursing assistant (CNA) and CNA-Plus accreditations — with the latter line of healthcare work focused on dealing with geriatric patients and those with dementia.

“We’ve also added to that telehealth training,” he said, a line of work that has boomed during the pandemic.

“There were a lot of people who were closed out of this virtual training because they didn’t have a laptop,” he said. Workforce Alliance helped provide laptops with Office Suite built in, as well as WiFi hotspots.

They’ve also worked with the city and New Haven Works during the pandemic to set up a new 10-week construction training program.

The two biggest problems that Workforce Alliance faces on a daily basis, he said, are strikingly similar now as they were before the pandemic.

The first involves ​“the academic challenges that people have.” That is, when people looking for work test below basic skills in reading and math, and are not able to successfully complete Workforce Alliance-provided job training. He said his agency works with New Haven Adult Ed and provides its own educational bootcamps to try to bring people up to the necessary education level.

The other major problem is, and has long been, transportation. ​“Getting people, especially New Haven residents, to where a majority of the jobs are.” If you’re an iron worker in New Haven whose next job is in Danbury or New London, he said, and you rely on public transportation, ​“That’s a challenge.”

How do most people get connected to Workforce Alliance? asked Commission Vice-Chair Anthony Sagnella (pictured).

For the formerly incarcerated, Villano said, Workforce Alliance has staff specifically assigned for the prison reentry population. They go to prisons and make presentations about the support services they provide. And they work with local reentry organizations like Project MORE.

He said Workforce Alliance is also relying more and more on social media, including Facebook, and Twitter, for general outreach.

“And we’ve got about 40 different community organizations that are mostly based in New Haven that we work with and communicate with.”

“These services are extremely accessible now,” added Piscitelli. As organizations like Workforce Alliance move more and more of their work online, if you’re someone on extended unemployment benefits and in need of help reentering the workforce, ​“The services that are available to extend and expand skillsets are just excellent right now.”

Covid Toll: ​“Stress Is At An All-Time High”

Mason said that New Haven Works, a local government-labor-private sector partnership that has been around since 2013, has many of the same employment-boosting goals as Workforce Alliance, but on a smaller scale that is focused specifically on the city of New Haven.

And rather than providing job training for those looking for work, she said, New Haven Works emphasizes ​“soft skills” around communication, conflict management, and how to look for a job in the first place.

Roughly 5,000 New Haveners have enrolled with New Haven Works since the agency’s founding, she said. Her agency provides career planning and coaching, background checks, resume and cover letter and application assistance, mock interview preparation, and networking events with employes.

“All of this work has been happening remotely” since the start of the pandemic, she said. ​“Job coaches are working with members and job seekers through Zoom. We’re conducting intake orientations through Zoom.” They’ve even hosted a number of networking events with local employers on Zoom.

Before the pandemic, many of the job referrals made by New Haven Works were in ​“education services”: particularly jobs at Yale University. ​“Though that hiring is paused,” she said, ​“there is a lot of hiring in the clinical area, in telehealth or clinical receptionist roles, particularly for temporary opportunities, which can transition into permanent roles.”

She said that she has seen the pandemic have a particularly harmful toll on members’ stress and anxiety levels. ​“Now that the pandemic has hit, stress is at an all-time high.”

“It’s testing people’s resilience around maintaining the expected professional face and professional façade at all times, she said. ​“It’s challenging. We’re not here to beat up on people. We want them to be successful.”

New Haven Works Construction Pipeline Coordinator Tyra Stanley (pictured) affirmed Villano’s assertion that limited public transportation is a major hurdle for people looking to reenter the workforce.

And she cited another connectivity consideration that comes up again and again in her conversations with people looking to hold down a new job: reliable phone service.

“Phones are getting turned off all the time” during the pandemic because people are unable to pay their phone bills, she said. ​“It’s almost as bad as transportation.”

Just last week, she said, she had to provide a construction contractor with two different updated phone numbers for a single referred prospective employee because that person’s preferred phone number had changed not once, but twice.

During the question-and-answer section of the meeting, commissioners uniformly praised New Haven Works for the services they provide in connected under- and unemployed city residents with jobs.

“I’ve sent a lot of people to New Haven Works,” said Kevin Ewing (pictured). ​“And I don’t know anyone who didn’t end up with a job. I commend you for that.”

“You’re truly some of my biggest heroes in New Haven,” said John Martin.

Wooster Square Alder Ellen Cupo (pictured) said she became a New Haven Works member in 2015, and it ​“changed my life,” helping her land a full-time job at Yale.

How can we be helpful? she asked Mason. ​“What can we do to help you?”

“A lot of our members have come through word of mouth,” Mason said. Helping to get the word out about the organization in any way possible would be a boon, considering how little marketing they do.

Villano added how important it is to remember that what many employed people view as just ​“speedbumps in life” — if they have trouble with a car or daycare doesn’t show up — are ​“dealkillers” for many who are underemployed or unemployed and looking for work.

“Whether it’s the legislative body for the city or the state, anything we can do to keep people engaged and help them get through the training and get to a job” is critical for keeping job support agencies like their doing the work that they do.