TRAINING & EDUCATION | Diverse Erie

In Erie County, only 1.8% of construction workers are Black, well below a national average that is already too low at 6.3%. The same gap runs across electrical, HVAC, and other skilled trades. These are careers that offer stable wages, long-term growth, and real pathways to building wealth. Closing the access gap is not just an equity issue, it is an economic one as well. Diverse Erie is investing in the partnerships and training pipelines that bring young BIPOC workers into the trades and keep them there.

These statistics reflect the need for an investment in strategic partnerships and training for young BIPOC who want to become skilled laborers — one of Diverse Erie’s transformational investment pillars. The statistics speak for themselves, and we must all do our part to help elevate the conversation around inequity, and how it effects BIPOC in our communities, not diminish it.

Diversifying_Educator_Workforce_V1.1_08122026

BIPOC students learn better, stay longer, and achieve more when they see themselves reflected in the people teaching them. Research is consistent on this point. In Pennsylvania, teachers of color make up just 7.9% of the educator workforce, one of the largest student-to-teacher diversity gaps in the country. Black teachers leave the profession at more than twice the rate of white teachers, with one in three exiting within five years. Diverse Erie is committed to changing that trajectory in Erie County by supporting pathways that bring more BIPOC students through college, into teacher preparation programs, and into classrooms across the county’s thirteen school districts.