This program connects Chicagoland employers with job-ready talent through a powerful network of community partners and institutions. Employers that join this cross-sector initiative receive custom sourcing support, access to overlooked talent pools, and services to attract, retain, and advance talent, all while making a measurable investment in Chicago’s future.
Get Involved!
Whether you're a business with jobs to fill, a community leader ready to collaborate, or an individual eager to contribute, there are many ways to participate.
Our Community Areas of Focus
Given the significant disparities in unemployment across Chicago neighborhoods, Hire Chicago is dedicated to connecting employers with talent from our 20 Community Areas of Focus, which experience high levels of joblessness.
Hire Chicago Employer Partners contribute to neighborhood stability, economic growth, and enhanced safety by refining their hiring practices and reducing barriers to employment. These efforts help bridge the workforce gap between the Community Areas of Focus and the rest of the city.
The map below displays the overall proportion of employees of Hire Chicago Employer Partners who live in the Community Areas of Focus. Companies that participate in data collection submit an annual, point-in-time count of employees residing in specified zip codes, as well as the total number of their Chicago-based employees. This reporting enables tracking of the proportion of employees living in the Community Areas of Focus beginning in 2026.
A More Complete Picture
The share of employees above is a helpful measure, but incomplete. Because Community Areas vary in population size, a more precise measure would account for the overall number of employed residents. To do this, we compare each Community Area’s share of Employer Partners' employees with the Community Area’s share of all employed persons in Chicago. The chart below shows the difference between those two shares for each Community Area.
If a Community Area’s measurement sits in the middle at 0 percent, then our Employer Partners are employing workers from that area in proportion to its share of Chicago’s employed residents. A value above zero means Employer Partners employ a higher-than-expected share of workers from that area; A value below zero means a lower-than expected share, which can be a helpful indicator to inform future growth of the initiative.
Methodology
Definitions
- Share of Employees: The proportion of Chicago-based employees of participating Hire Chicago Employer Partners who live in a given Community Area. In other words, the percentage of all Chicago employees who live in a given Community Area.
- Labor Force: People aged 16 or older who are either employed or actively seeking employment. Note that the labor force excludes people who are retired as well as people who are in school full-time and choose not to work.
- Hire Chicago Employer Partners: Member Companies of the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago who agree to share their hiring data in support of the effort to track employment in Community Areas of Focus.
- Civic Committee Areas of Focus: The Civic Committee is focusing its four violence prevention strategies in 20 Community Areas identified by its Public Safety Task Force. View a map of these Community Areas of Focus.
Sources
Administrative records of participating Hire Chicago Employer Partners
Limitations
- Data reflect employment of Hire Chicago Employer Partners who have agreed to share aggregate data, and does not include all Hire Chicago Employer Partners.
- Participating Hire Chicago Employer Partners share their hiring data as a count of employees living within each zip code. To estimate employee counts at the community area level, we use U.S. Census Bureau data to calculate how much each ZIP code overlaps with the population of each community area, then apply those overlap percentages to the total employee counts.
- Employee counts from participating Hire Chicago Employer Partners are provided asynchronously as point-in-time counts based one when they join the program and represent a snapshot of their Chicago-based workforces.
- Hiring data from participating Hire Chicago Employer Partners is received as aggregate counts rather than person-level data and does not reflect the trajectories of individual members of their workforces.
Additional Notes
It’s important to recognize that individuals leave their jobs for a wide range of reasons—both positive and negative. For instance, someone might acquire valuable skills as an employee of a Hire Chicago Employer Partner that enable them to transition into a higher-paying position elsewhere. While this may reduce the overall count of employees (and ultimately the share of employees residing in our community areas of focus), it represents a positive and successful outcome for the individual.
