Message from the Executive Director
On behalf of the Board and staff at KentuckianaWorks, I'm proud to share this Impact Report with you. Our Board has set three key priorities for our work - Racial Equity, Career Pathways, and Alignment (making sure we're preparing people with the skills needed by our region's employers). We've organized our Impact Report to show the difference our efforts are making in each of these priority areas.
You will see near the bottom of this report that for the first time ever, KentuckianaWorks received as much funding from Louisville Metro Government in FY24 as we did from our core federal funding stream (the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act). Let me express a huge THANK YOU here to Mayor Craig Greenberg and the Louisville Metro Council, who together significantly increased their investment this year in our young adult work, a partnership with Goodwill of Kentucky called The Spot: Young Adult Opportunity Center. As a direct result of that new investment, we served our largest number of young adults in Louisville in more than a decade.
Let me also express my thanks to our great Board of Directors, led by Chairman Jonathan Westbrook, the great staff I get to work with every day, and the many partners who help us do this vital and important work. Keep in mind that while we're giving you numbers and data below, behind each of these numbers is an individual whose life has been improved through our combined efforts!
Michael Gritton
Executive Director | KentuckianaWorks
Centuries of discriminatory policy have created systemic inequities in access to quality employment. Black workers in the KentuckianaWorks region experience unemployment rates three times higher than the region’s white workers. Even after controlling for one’s education, workers of color are more likely to be crowded into low-quality, low-wage work. Given this context, the KentuckianaWorks Board of Directors committed to centering Racial Equity as the first pillar of our work.
Kentucky Career Center on Broadway opens in west Louisville
The Kentucky Career Center on Broadway opened its doors to the public as an anchor tenant at Goodwill’s West Louisville Opportunity Center in March. Located in a historically underserved area of town with mostly Black residents, our new flagship adult career center is well-positioned to make a lasting difference in the careers and lives of thousands of customers. In addition to the job placement data below, the Kentucky Career Center team hosted more than 50 hiring events and ran career workshops for more than 1,900 job seekers.
Kentucky Career Center Key Performance Indicators
New Enrollments
People Placed in Jobs
Average Wage
The Spot: Young Adult Opportunity Center, a partnership with Goodwill Industries of Kentucky, connected young adults throughout the Louisville region with career resources and wraparound support services, including reliable transportation, housing, mental health counseling, paid internships, career training, and jobs.
The Spot: Young Adult Opportunity Center serves more than 1,000 16-24 year olds
More than 14,000 disconnected youth, 16-to-24-year-olds not enrolled in school and not working.
The disconnection rate is double among Black youth and young adults as compared to their white peers.
the spot Key Performance Indicators
New Enrollments
People Placed in Jobs
Average Wage
Kentuckiana Builds training graduates find employment with nearly $20 average hourly wage
More than one hundred participants enrolled in our construction training partnership with the Louisville Urban League in 2023-24. This 6-week technical education and hands-on training program introduces job seekers to the skilled construction trades including electrical, plumbing, carpentry, HVAC, and more.
Despite making up 13% of the region's workforce, Black workers account for only 4% of local jobs in the construction industry.
Source: Lightcast (2024)
Kentuckiana builds Key Performance Indicators
New Enrollments
People Placed in Jobs
Average Wage
Reentry Works, our partnership with the Center for Employment Opportunities (CEO), connects people returning from prison with a support system, including access to a transitional job, counseling, transportation, and other resources.
The Block by Block transitional work crew, supported by Reentry Works, focuses on the beautification and cleaning of Louisville Metro streets and sidewalks (photos below).
Reentry Works helps people released from prison find full-time work and resources
Our criminal justice system disproportionately impacts Black people.
In Jefferson County, almost half of the jail population is Black, even though only 23% of the county’s residents are Black. Source.
reentry works Key Performance Indicators
New Enrollments
People Placed in Jobs
Average Wage
Although there is no one-size-fits-all definition of what makes a good job, factors like compensation, benefits, workplace culture, racial equity and inclusion efforts, and training and advancement opportunities often play a role. The KentuckianaWorks Board identified Career Pathways - jobs that offer stability and a road to middle-class wages - as one of its three strategic priorities.
Over the 2024 summer, Code Louisville made its 1,000th job placement! 772 employers across the country have hired at least one Code Louisville student. Top hiring partners over the years include UPS, Humana, El Toro, Virtual Peaker, and Waystar. The program’s volunteer mentors have also donated more than 18,000 hours of their time to support students.
The popular tech training program, which was founded in 2013, offers courses in web development, data analysis, and more.
Code Louisville placed its 1,000th program graduate in a technology job
The living wage for a single adult in Louisville with no dependents is $21.05 per hour.
Source: MIT’s Living Wage Calculator
code louisville Key Performance Indicators
New Enrollments
People Placed in Jobs
Average Wage
College Access Center helps clients navigate challenging FAFSA season
This year, the KentuckianaWorks College Access Center (KCAC) served more than 3,000 adults and high school students, including 2,307 adults seeking to start or return to college (the most for the program since 2019!).
Located on 4th Street in downtown Louisville, the KCAC offers a variety of in-demand college planning and application support services, including help with the FAFSA. This was especially critical over the past year, as a new FAFSA roll-out led to widespread delays and confusion for prospective students across the country.
Clients Served
In August, the U.S. Department of Commerce announced that $40 million in workforce funding would go to nonprofit SOAR (Shaping Our Appalachian Region), a partner of Code Kentucky. Through this partnership, many more residents of eastern Kentucky stand to benefit in coming years from the software development training program that was inspired by the Code Louisville model.
$5 million in new funding will expand Code Kentucky in eastern Kentucky
Bringing employers and workers together to build a stronger workforce
KentuckianaWorks expanded its efforts to bring employers together, elevate worker voice and support training programs and initiatives focused on worker needs:
Through Generation Work, employers engaged in a series of ongoing dialogues with young adult workers about the barriers and challenges they’re facing.
The Refugee Employer Engagement Program (REEP) provides training support and guidance to employers seeking to empower and better integrate refugees into their workforce.
KentuckianaWorks and Southern Indiana Works collaborated with job seekers to find ways to make the workforce system more accessible to rural job seekers on both sides of the Ohio River.
KentuckianaWorks developed the Workforce Investor Badge, which will soon be awarded to Louisville region employers who have shown an outstanding commitment to their frontline workers.
KentuckianaWorks continued our sector-based employer engagement work as well. In February of this year, the Health Careers Collaborative of Greater Louisville (HCCGL) kicked off a year of investigating the potential disruptive impact of Generative AI on healthcare practice and education
The KentuckianaWorks Board identified Alignment - preparing workers with the skills employers need - as its third strategic priority. Over the next 30 years, the Louisville region’s population age 55 and older is projected to grow faster than adults in their prime working years (25-54) as well as children and young adults under age 25. In this context of an aging workforce, investment in next generation talent is critical.
$6 million in new funds for disconnected youth and high school seniors
The Kentucky General Assembly made its first ever direct investment in our work through Putting Young Kentuckians to Work, a state-wide initiative led by KentuckianaWorks and the Cumberlands Workforce Development Board. $6 million of this $20 million multi-year investment will go to the Louisville region, helping to support high school seniors as they transition into the workforce, as well as participants of The Spot: Young Adult Career Center.
Above: Michael Gritton and colleagues from other regional workforce boards presenting to the Interim Joint Committee Economic Development & Workforce Investment of the Kentucky State Legislature. See their presentation here.
In 2023-24, KentuckianaWorks expanded its work supporting the Academies of Louisville (AofL) through new funding from the Jefferson County Public Education Foundation and the Gheens Foundation.
This new team within KentuckianaWorks, called the Academies of Louisville Alliance, is focused on connecting more community leaders, business partners, and other stakeholders to the innovative career-themed education model at 15 Jefferson County public high schools. 200+ businesses are now partnering with Academies of Louisville schools.
Launched the Academies of Louisville Alliance to support Jefferson County Public Schools
JCPS saw a record 78% post-secondary readiness rate among graduating seniors.
This was an increase from 50% in 2017, before the Academies of Louisville model was adopted.
High demand for youth summer jobs program SummerWorks
A record number of youth registered on the SummerWorks online jobs platform (KentuckianaEARNS) this season. In addition to helping youth connect with private sector employers, SummerWorks also funded positions at nonprofit and city agency work sites across the city. More than half of sponsored positions went to youth from target zip codes in west, south, and central Louisville.
Above: Mayor Greenberg kicked off the SummerWorks 2024 season at the J.B. Speed School of Engineering, which increased its hiring from five youth last season to twelve this year.
Sponsored Placements
thank you to our
Donors & funders
Annie E. Casey Foundation
Commonwealth of Kentucky
FHI 360
Gheens Foundation
Ginkgo Fund
Jefferson County Public Education Foundation
Jewish Family Career Services
Jewish Heritage Fund
JPMorganChase
Louisville Metro Government
Mary Gwen Wheeler and David Jones Jr.
National Fund for Workforce Solutions
National Youth Employment Coalition
Norton Healthcare
Shaping Our Appalachian Region (SOAR)
U.S. Department of Education
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
U.S. Department of Labor
WorkOne - Southern Indiana
