Southside Works’ Career Fairs at Pittsburgh Yards
In the summer of 2023, Southside Works, an Atlanta-based collaborative focused on job training and career connections, began hosting career fairs at Pittsburgh Yards. These youth-targeted events — sponsored by the Annie E. Casey Foundation — encouraged employers to recruit from Atlanta’s often overlooked Southside and is helping inform the success of future job fairs.
“We’ve held two career fairs at Pittsburgh Yards. At our second fair in November, the number of attendees doubled from 30 people to 60,” says Ade Oguntoye, a senior associate with the Casey Foundation. “The events been a great way for jobseekers and employers to connect and learn from one another.”
Creating Economic Opportunity on Atlanta’s Southside
As Southside Works plans two Pittsburgh Yards career fairs for 2024, organizers will draw on three takeaways from 2023’s events:
- Young people deserve high-quality employment. One important consideration for the fair planners was attracting companies that offer competitive pay. “Ideally, we’d like the employers that attend the careers fairs to offer jobs that start at $20 an hour,” Oguntoye notes. “This isn’t always an easy ask, but the reality is that young people need careers that pay a living wage.”
- Everyone is welcome. Although the events are intended to connect residents of Atlanta’s Southside to employment opportunities, they’re open to jobseekers from across Georgia.
- Transformational, not transactional. Although the career fairs help connect young people to jobs, they are more broadly focused on creating economic opportunity on Atlanta’s Southside. “It’s great when someone can come to one of these events and walk out with a job offer but that’s not the only goal,” says Oguntoye. “Another priority is helping employers recognize the south side of Atlanta as a place with a talented, hardworking labor pool they can draw from.”
Income and Employment in Atlanta
According to data from the Atlanta Wealth Building Initiative, the city of Atlanta had the highest income inequality in the nation in 2022. While the median household income in Atlanta is roughly $69,000, the median income of Black households in the city is under $40,000 as of 2023.
At the same time, the city is experiencing record-high employment. Over the past 14 years, Atlanta’s unemployment rate dipped from 13% in 2009 to roughly 6% in 2023. For the city’s Black households during the same period, unemployment plummeted from 21% in 2009 to 9% in 2023.
“The data supports that all people, including Black people, are willing to work. However, Black men and women are more likely to be underpaid for doing the same jobs,” says Oguntoye. “In addition to inequitable pay, the predominantly Black households on Atlanta’s Southside face barriers such as affordable housing, lack of public transportation and accessible child care.”
Southside Works’ career fairs offer an opportunity to residents and area stakeholders. Although the events alone cannot eliminate the employment and economic barriers faced by Black Atlantans, they connect Black youth to quality employment and combat income inequality while helping the Foundation, Southside Works and local employers better understand and learn from the city’s jobseekers.
