Forward Together

Job Creation & Business Growth (1.0)

Creating more good jobs and growing businesses owned by people of color and women

The initiatives associated with this area of focus are motivated by two key challenges:

  1. Addressing racial wealth gaps requires not just starting or stabilizing BIPOC-and women owned businesses but growing those that already exist. Race and gender disparities in business ownership are largest among potentially high growth firms: people of color are 35% of the Greater Seattle workforce and own 24% of businesses overall, but only 8% of potentially high-growth businesses.
  2. Greater Seattle needs tens of thousands of new good jobs, which for most families means wages of at least $25 per hour. These jobs are concentrated in innovative, traded sector businesses. Greater Seattle therefore needs focused, strategic, regional efforts to compete for investment in sectors with the greatest post-Covid growth potential.

Learn More About Job Creation & Business Growth Initiatives

These Job Creation & Business Growth initiatives complement a portfolio of four inter-related areas of focus originally developed by a Task Force of 200 community leaders in academia, business, government, and not-for-profit. Specific goals, metrics, funding amounts and partners are detailed in the regional Economic Recovery Framework.

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