What you need to know: The California Jobs First Economic Blueprint will guide the state’s investments in key sectors to drive sustainable economic growth, innovation, and access to good-paying jobs over the next decade. The complete Economic Blueprint will be released early next year, along with $120 million to support “ready-to-go” job-creating projects statewide within the next three years.

FRESNO - Alongside community leaders, local officials and business owners from the Central San Joaquin region, Governor Gavin Newsom today unveiled the framework for the forthcoming California Jobs First Economic Blueprint - a first-of-its kind, bottom-up strategy for creating good-paying jobs and regional economic development. 

Made up of ten key industry sectors, this framework will help streamline the state’s economic, business, and workforce development programs to create more jobs, faster, as part of the California Jobs First initiative. The state’s thirteen economic regions engaged more than 10,000 local residents and experts who collectively identified these sectors as key to driving local economies into the future.

“Each region of California has its own strengths - we’re helping build out each local economy with a bottom-up approach that’ll connect more good-paying jobs with California families. From agriculture to clean energy to manufacturing and everything in between, these blueprints will foster growth and expansion throughout every community of California.” - Governor Gavin Newsom

California’s economy has industries at all stages. They are categorized as follows within the Economic Blueprint:

- Strengthen: Tradable sectors where California has an established competitive position and/or significant employment, but where there is leveling growth or wages

- Accelerate: Tradable sectors with moderate to high projected growth that are ready for expansion, where additional investments (e.g., capital, infrastructure) could “bend the curve” to generate growth

- Bet: Emerging tradable sectors with significant investment or high strategic importance to the innovation ecosystem

- Anchor: Foundational local sectors that are critical for attracting and supporting industry and community activities

The California Jobs First Economic Blueprint will highlight the ways in which workforce development can help Californians, particularly the most uninvested in communities, in meeting the specific skillset needs of the State’s and our regions’ priority industry sectors.

“Today is another critically important milestone in aligning strategic investments that further economic growth and job creation in every region of California,” said Dee Dee Myers, Senior Advisor to Governor Newsom and Director of the Governor’s Office of Business & Economic Development. “This new economic framework will set the foundation for sustainable and inclusive growth, ensuring that the industries of today and tomorrow provide the good-paying jobs Californians deserve.”

The complete Economic Blueprint will be released early next year, along with $120 million over three years in competitive funding to support “ready-to-go” job-creating projects aligned to state priority sectors, ensuring that every region across California continues to play a critical role in the sustainable growth of the world’s fifth largest economy.

“Governor Newsom has driven an unprecedented $4 billion of state investment in training people for good jobs, and California continues to lead the nation in education, apprenticeship and earn-and-learn programs,” said Stewart Knox, Secretary of the Labor and Workforce Development Agency. “Having a well-prepared workforce is a crucial part of ensuring that our state has a healthy economy for decades to come.”

How we got here

- In 2021, Governor Newsom launched a statewide economic development planning process called the Community Economic Resilience Fund (CERF), which was later renamed the Regional Investment Initiative under the banner of California Jobs First in 2023. The objective was to create high-quality, accessible jobs and sustainable economic growth across the state’s 13 regions.

- Each region created a planning body - or collaborative - with representation from a wide variety of community partners including labor, business, local government, education, environmental justice, community organizations and more. The collaboratives then wrote their own data-driven, community-led economic plans, including identifying priority sectors.

- To support this process, California has invested $287 million since 2022, including $5 million per region for planning, $39 million for pilot projects across the state and $14 million per region to develop viable projects that advance their strategic sectors.

- In March, Governor Newsom announced the creation of the California Jobs First Council, made up of nine Cabinet-level agencies, focused on streamlining the state’s economic and workforce development programs to create more jobs, faster.

What local leaders are saying

Melissa James, President & CEO, REACH (Central Coast region): “People have been at the heart of the California Jobs First process, where broad, inclusive outreach has allowed local residents across the state’s 13 regions to design strategies and projects that uplift their economies. This historic, people-first investment infuses real resources into the economy to uplift both people and communities, ensuring growth and opportunity are shared across the state.”

Manpreet Kaur, Project Director, Kern County Coalition (Kern County region): “A rich history of labor movements was born right out of Kern County, with incredible leaders like Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta and yet, we haven’t always had the opportunity to come together as one community and develop the roadmap for the future of our workers and our community. California Jobs First set the table for all of us, as one Kern County, to sit together and do the hard work, ensuring all people in our region can access quality jobs into the future.”

Karen Warner, CEO, Beam Circular (North San Joaquin region): “California is home to the industries and innovators that are shaping the materials, food, energy, and products that we use every day. California Jobs First will help us make big bets on the industries of the future that will deliver quality jobs, a healthy environment, and new pathways to prosperity in local communities across every region of the state.”

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