As enticements go, bottled water and oatmeal raisin cookies, even very good ones, don’t seem too alluring. But Patrick Bokovitz, the executive director of the Chester County Workforce Investment Board, had something better than refreshments to offer 35 local employers crammed into a meeting room Thursday outside West Chester:
Expand your workforce now, Bokovitz told them, and the federal government will pick up most of the tab.
Starting next week, Pennsylvania will pump $78 million of federal stimulus funding, plus an additional $19.5 million of its own money, into Way to Work, a statewide subsidized-job program.
The federal money, funneled through the state's Department of Public Welfare, will underwrite wages of up to $13 an hour for adults and minimum wage for youths.
The goal is to employ 20,000.
Full story: Pennsylvania races clock to find 30,000 jobs | Philadelphia Inquirer | 05/09/2010