Program aims to help long-term unemployed workers get back into the workforce

CINCINNATI - Nathan Smith is 52 years old and has been unemployed for the past 25 months.

Smith lost his construction job when the economy tanked. He’s applied for jobs everywhere he can think of, including Kroger, Walmart, Target and Meijer.

“I’ve been really struggling to pay my bills,” he said.

Smith is hoping a new effort in Cincinnati can turn that around. He’s one of 24 participants in Platform to Employment, or P2E, a newly launched program that aims to help military veterans age 30 and younger and long-term unemployed workers who are older than 50.

It’s a program that’s desperately needed, said Sherry Kelley Marshall, CEO of the Southwest Ohio Region Workforce Investment Board.

That’s despite the fact that Hamilton County’s official unemployment rate was 6.2 percent in December.

“The number is false in its interpretation of what’s going on in the economy,” she said.

Marshall noted that on Dec. 15 in Hamilton County, 18,000 more people exhausted their unemployment benefits. The county now has more than 50,000 people who have exhausted their benefits, she said.

P2E will attack that problem by providing five weeks of job readiness training along with personal and family support and financial counseling provided through the Urban League of Greater Cincinnati . The program then matches participants with employers who have job openings. P2E subsidizes its participants’ wages for eight weeks so employers can evaluate whether they’re the right fit.

Program funders include AARP Foundation, Citi Community Development and the Walmart Foundation.

P2E began in southwestern Connecticut as a program of The WorkPlace , based in Bridgeport, Conn. It’s being expanded to 10 other cities around the country this year. Cincinnati is the first expansion city.

Joseph Carbone, CEO of The WorkPlace, told a group of new P2E participants Monday that they are the “heroes” of the program.

“You did nothing wrong. You were at the wrong place at the wrong time,” he said.

Now, he said, it’s up to these first local participants to work hard and succeed in the program, which Carbone said could encourage local funders to keep the program going.

“It’s not that 20 people are going to put a dent in the long-term unemployed in this region,” he said. “But we have to start somewhere.”

Smith said he’s certainly not afraid to work hard to succeed in P2E.

“I’m hoping to get a career, a job that’s steady and consistent with abilities that will last until I retire,” he said.