Programs must be tailored to the current skills required by local employers. Placement needs to be a priority, and should be considered even before people are accepted into these programs. Workers need to know that a job will be waiting for them after they go through the effort of building their specific skills. There are several examples from Rochester and other parts of the region that illustrate the potential for this approach to workforce development. In fact, Rochester has a long history of involvement in workforce development. In 1885, a group of Rochester businessmen founded the Mechanics Institute. The Institute’s mission was to establish free evening schools in the city for instruction in mechanical drawing and other technical skills important for industrial firms. Funding was provided by contributions from Rochester residents. The first class drew more than 400 students. This endeavor evolved over time into RIT. Strong partnerships between Rochester’s higher education institutions and local businesses continue to this day. For example, RIT’s Center for Bioscience Education and Training provides local businesses and associations with workforce training tailor-made to specific organizational needs. And at RIT’s newly created Knorr-Bremse Mechatronics Laboratory, the university works with the companies that employ its graduates to make sure they have the technical skills they need to be successful. At the University of Rochester, the Center for Emerging & Innovative Sciences as well as the Center for Medical Technology partner with local companies to leverage the cutting edge research being done by the university’s faculty and students.
As their employment began to decline, some workers left the area while others remained. Indeed the legacy of the “Big 3” lies not in what was lost, but in what remains in the skills and entrepreneurial spirit of the many talented people that are here today. Some of these talented people started their own companies, while others found different ways to contribute their unique talents to the local economy. As a result, Rochester continues to reinvent itself, and is now much more diverse, with an employment base that is no longer concentrated among a few large manufacturers. The top employers in the region, like the University of Rochester and Rochester Institute of  BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  Technology (RIT), Wegmans, the Rochester General Health System and Paychex, just to name a few, perform a variety of activities, from health care and education to consumer and business services. The process of reinvention and economic diversification, in part, allowed the region to better weather the storm of the Great Recession compared to past economic recessions. For Rochester, the downturn was both shorter and less severe in terms of job loss than for the nation as a whole – a situation quite different from what had occurred before. Though it still lags the nation, the Rochester area has continued to grow at a solid pace through the recovery. This is no small feat, and it certainly is not true for all of Upstate New York.