San Antonio’s taxpayer-funded workforce development program, Ready to Work, is planning to reach the “pinnacle for service levels” this year before it starts winding things down, program officials said in their annual update to the City Council.
Ready to Work Executive Director Mike Ramsey shared projections and a budget for July 2026 through June 2027.
The program has made enormous strides in its job placement and training completions, Ramsey emphasized, but it will need to pick up its pace to meet its goals before it wraps up in 2030.
Budget breakdown
Ramsey presented a $42.8 million budget, lower than its 2025 and 2026 budgets, which were set at $49.5 million and $44.8 million.
One major cut from the program budget was on-the-job training programs. In 2024, Ready to Work had pushed that program, which gave employers funding to train Ready to Work participants in their workplace, but Ramsey said it had been underutilized by employers.
Ramsey said $6 million had been set aside for that program last year, but employers didn’t meet hiring commitments and only utilized around $1 million. The rest of that funding is being put back into the program.
“They entered into an agreement with the city saying that they wanted to hire a certain review. Their hiring needs shifted,” Ramsey said. “They didn’t have any anticipated vacancies they thought they were going to have. It wasn’t primarily that they just didn’t want to hire a work participants.”
For the 2027 fiscal year, which runs from July 2026 to June 2027, $4.9 million of the Ready to Work budget is spent on administration, outreach and support programs.
Half of that budget is going to tuition for program participants. Ready to Work funds tuition and training support for participants through contracts with its partner organizations. Those contracts also include case management, wraparound services, child care and intake assessments.
The costs of those contracts have increased, Ramsey said, due to rising labor costs. That has negated higher-than-expected revenues from the one-eighth-cent sales tax, which generated $86 million more than expected.
Ramsey said program partners — Workforce Solutions Alamo, Alamo Colleges, Project Quest, Restore Education, Goodwill Industries and Hallmark University — have also gotten better at working as a team in the last year.
“It’s a systematic change that’s occurring through Ready to Work. They’re all working better together, they all have better relationships with the local employers, there’s more alignment there,” Ramsey said. “But that’s not something that happens overnight. It just takes time.”
More job placements?
A long-running critique of the program, which kicked off in 2022 and was funded with $236 million from a one-eighth-cent sales tax, has been its struggle to quickly place program participants in new jobs.
Ready to Work’s earliest goals were to get 28,000 workers in new jobs. That goal has been reduced to 15,600.
Now, though, job placement and training completion numbers are climbing fast, Ramsey said.
On April 28, Ready to Work had placed more than 4,700 workers in new jobs. Over the last 12 months it’s done so at a nearly 200 worker-per-month rate, up from around 50 during the first three years of the program. That has more than doubled its job placements from its first three years.
To meet future goals, though, Ready to Work will have to hit an even higher gear. By the end of the program in 2030, Ready to Work is on track to place just over 14,700 workers, shy of its revised 15,600-job placement goal. The program has placed 406 workers in new jobs this month and Ramsey was confident that trend would continue.
“The program has gained significant momentum over the last year, and we hope that momentum continues into the finality of the program in 2030,” he said.
Ready to Work is also trying to get its participants in jobs more quickly; 62% of participants land an approved job after six months. The program’s target was 80%.
“It’s still the target we’re going to keep striving for. Will we ever hit it? Probably not. We got to keep doing our best,” Ramsey said. “At 80%, it’s not what you typically see serving the population that we’re serving. The barriers that they’re facing are extremely high.”
Council response
Though city council members have scrutinized the program in the past, at an April 15 meeting, there was plenty of praise.
“I’m very proud of what we’ve done so far,” said Councilwoman Phyllis Viagran (D3).
Councilwoman Teri Castillo (D5) said the program had increased wages in her district and created opportunities for residents with criminal records, an issue she’s focused on in her tenure.
Other council members did push for improvements. Councilman Marc Whyte (D10) said he was glad to see progress, but asked how the program could better cater to employers and speed up job placements. Whyte also noted that the City of San Antonio was Ready to Work’s third-largest employer.
City Manager Erik Walsh said the city is competing against other employers to hire those workers for roles like as truck drivers in the Solid Waste Management and Public Works departments.
“I think it’s to our benefit as an organization if I can hire someone who has gone through the necessary training,” Walsh said. “We’re one of the largest employers in the city.”
The other leading employers are hospital systems, led by Methodist Healthcare.
Multiple council members asked if the program could focus on specific, in-demand jobs. Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones highlighted the need for efficiency with Ready to Work’s spending and mentioned plumbers, welders and building trades. Councilwoman Misty Spears (D9) discussed artificial intelligence skills. Councilman Jalen McKee-Rodriguez (D2) said child care workers need higher wages.
“We’ve got real gaps in the workforce. How we can best aim to fill those is what I think we owe not only the people that are entrusting us with their time and energies as they go through this program, but certainly the taxpayer,” Jones said.
Return on investment study
Ready to Work also took time last week to present a study on the program’s economic impacts.
The analysis, conducted by Steve Nivin, chair of St. Mary’s University’s Economics Department, projected an $11.8 billion impact over the lifetimes of more than 11,000 people who were participating in the program or had gained jobs through it by October 2025.
That comes from increased wages, according to Ready to Work’s data dashboard successful graduates make $33,699 more on average. There are additional economic impacts from those graduates spending that money and relying less on social safety net programs, like food or medical assistance, according to Nivin’s analysis.
The analysis anticipates future wage gains for all 11,000 people who had been admitted to the program at the time, though around 2,000 had been placed in new jobs at the time. It also includes projections for some workers leaving San Antonio for other opportunities.
When calculating wage gains, Nivin used information available in tax documents, which could exclude some income like tips.
“The participant’s wage that is calculated would depend on their former employer’s IRS filings,” Luke Simons, a city spokesman explained, in an email. “If tips are included in the IRS filings, that would show up in their total income.”
There are also quality of life impacts that aren’t reflected in the economic analysis, according to Ready to Work staff, particularly for low-income families or community members who have been involved with the justice system.
“Many parents have also shared that when they work hard and finish training to get an in-demand job, many have seen the positive impact that new opportunity has had on their children by opening their eyes to future possibilities,” Simons said. “We have also seen justice-involved participants who have been able to reintegrate into society and become successful working members of the community. ”
