The Franklin County Commissioners today approved a $2,537,300 contract with the Workforce Development Board of Central Ohio to fund Women @ Work, a program to support Franklin County women who are returning to the workforce following the pandemic.
The pandemic’s effects led to job losses across the economy and for every demographic, but women seem to have been particularly hard-hit. Whether due to the nature of the jobs they traditionally fill, due to a need to care for family members, or for some other reason, unprecedented numbers of women exited the workforce over the past 18 months. Now that the economy is beginning to come back, women in the workforce do not seem to be sharing in the recovery, and are finding it difficult to return to work or to find jobs that pay as much as they were making before.
The Women @ Work program will provide Franklin County women whose jobs have been impacted by the pandemic with information on high-demand job opportunities, training, education, financial support, mental health support, and coaching sessions on career planning. The program will also bring 150 individual women together for focused support to gain employment, career exploration activities, and individual career planning.
This funding is being made available with funds from the American Rescue Plan. You can read the full text of the resolution
here and learn more about how the commissioners are using the American Rescue Plan to help our community recover from the pandemic and its economic effects at
Recovery.FranklinCountyOhio.gov.