Young Adult Workforce Gains Momentum in Pierce County

Collaboration for a Cause – Youth Edition

June 17, 2025

Collaboration for a Cause – Youth Edition was held in April 2025 inside the South Hill Mall and showcased how a well-designed workforce event can turn a shopping concourse into a living career hub. Powered by WorkForce Central and convened by its Pierce County Community Engagement Task Force, the gathering drew more than 650 young adults and over 50 employers, unions, training providers, and social service partners.

Throughout the afternoon, the mall’s main promenade thrummed with interview stations, résumé triage tables, pop-up workshops, and a “Voice of the Community” podcast corner. Each element deliberately engineered to shorten the distance between first contact and a genuine hiring conversation.

Kelly Brickhouse, Christian Reed, and Tamar Jackson served as co-architects of the experience, anchoring operations while circulating to capture real-time feedback. Their “Run It Back” interview segment, recorded on-site, crystallized the day’s core insight: young job seekers are motivated and prepared but repeatedly stall at the same bottleneck—employers that advertise openings yet never return calls or extend interviews.

Christian Reed noted that post-COVID hiring protocols have accreted unnecessary screening layers; employers with lean HR teams default to candidates who already possess experience, degrees, or certifications, leaving first-time applicants in electronic limbo.

Jackson challenged businesses to “stop saying we’re too busy to give young adults a chance,” arguing that vacancy backlogs and talent shortages are self-inflicted when organizations ignore eager local applicants.

The event’s design counter-punched those barriers. WorkForce Central’s Business Solutions team promoted its 90-day wage-reimbursement internships, allowing firms to say “yes” even when internal training capacity is thin. Career advisors and WorkSource coaches offered walk-up mock interviews and instant résumé edits, equipping youth to articulate transferrable skills the moment a recruiter became available. Several employers responded in kind: multiple on-the-spot conditional hires were reported before the booths were even dismantled.

Beyond immediate placements, the day generated an invaluable qualitative dataset. More than one hundred attendees sat for brief, recorded conversations about their aspirations and hurdles. Interests spanned aviation, nursing, welding, firefighting, childcare, digital media, horticulture, plumbing, and small-business ownership, underscoring the need for a diversified pipeline that honors both college and non-college pathways. Common challenges surfaced with striking consistency: minimum-age restrictions, blanket “experience required” filters, lengthy, duplicative online application flows, transportation gaps, and, for some, the lingering educational and emotional disruptions of the pandemic. This unvarnished testimony will inform WorkForce Central’s quarterly planning and feed directly into the Task Force’s fall follow-up fair at the Tacoma Dome.

From a community engagement standpoint, the venue choice was symbolic. Several participants reminisced about childhood afternoons waiting for parents who worked in the same mall, returning as emerging professionals reframed the space as their own. Parents and grandparents wandered through as guests rather than primary targets, reinforcing the message that the region is willing to center youth needs explicitly.

Importantly, no adult job seeker was turned away, demonstrating inclusivity without diluting focus.

In sum, Collaboration for a Cause – Youth Edition proved that when workforce systems leave the office and meet young people where they already congregate and back words with tangible hiring incentives, attendance soars, and confidence rises on both sides of the hiring table.

The Task Force’s mantra—“collaboration is the new currency”—translated into measurable outcomes: hundreds of meaningful employer conversations, fresh hires, and a trove of community-voiced data to refine future services. With momentum building toward the Tacoma Dome event this fall, Pierce County has a replicable template for turning periodic job fairs into sustained, youth-centered talent pipelines.