JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM) announced a $3 million grant to Advocate Charitable Foundation to launch the Healthcare Workforce Collaborative run by Advocate Health Care that will provide healthcare-focused, skill-based training for middle-skill occupations to unemployed and underemployed populations. This grant is the largest single corporate gift in Advocate’s 20-year history as an integrated health system.

Recently, JPMorgan Chase released a Chicago Skills Gap report that determined there will be more than 14,000 middle-skill job openings every year in Chicago’s healthcare sector through 2019. These middle-skill jobs require more than a high school degree, but not a Bachelor’s degree, and the average pay is higher than the region’s living wage of $18.98/hour. The report also said that the region’s workforce doesn’t have the skills to fill these new jobs.

The Healthcare Workforce Collaborative will focus on four to five middle-skill healthcare occupations that include both in-patient and out-patient jobs. The program will position graduates into employment opportunities and lay the foundation for longer-term career growth. There will be four hospitals and a number of outpatient sites that engage in the program that will launch out of Advocate Trinity Hospital in the Calumet Heights neighborhood and expand after the startup phase. More than 1,000 participants will receive training over the course of the grant.

“As a continually growing organization, Advocate is increasing our need for patient service representatives, certified medical assistants, phlebotomists, home health aides, schedulers and various technicians, among other middle-skills workers,” said Kevin Brady, chief human resources officer for Advocate Health Care. “There is a limited talented pool for certain hard-to-fill positions, and it can take months to fill these openings with qualified, experienced candidates. As a not-for-profit health system, Advocate has always relied on philanthropic partnerships to fulfill our health care mission. This investment by Chase will allow us to have a more comprehensive, systematic and strategic approach to ensuring we have the workforce required to the meet health needs of the individuals, families and communities we serve.”

Healthcare makes up 23 percent of all well-paying middle-skill online job postings in the region. It is the largest private sector employer with more than 410,000 positions. Middle-skill healthcare opportunities in the Chicago area include biomedical equipment technicians for dialysis centers and medical laboratories, physical and occupational therapy assistants, surgical technologists, and health information managers. Bilingual candidates, in particular Spanish speakers, are highly sought by Chicago-area employers.

“Our Skills Gap report identified the growing opportunity gap for low-income and low-skilled workers, which is one of our greatest workforce priorities,” said Melissa Bean, Chairman of the Midwest for JPMorgan Chase. “This investment will help people gain the work skills they need to transform their lives and strengthen our region’s economy.”

The report also says that the Chicago area’s employers, workforce system and education and training providers have to work together to get our workforce ready for these new opportunities. Chicago’s JPMorgan Chase Foundation has created a workforce initiative that catalyzes this collaboration.

Along with releasing the Skills Gap Report, JPMorgan Chase recently gave a $500,000 grant to the Chicagoland Workforce Funders Alliance (CWFA) to help drive alignment across employers and workforce partners to address existing systems challenges and promote common metrics and data-driven decision making. Working with World Business Chicago, the Chicago Cook Workforce Partnership, and the Healthcare Workforce Collaborative, CWFA will create a network of healthcare entities with hiring needs.

The JPMorgan Chase workforce investment is part of the bank’s $250 million, five-year global workforce readiness initiative, New Skills at Work, the largest ever private-sector effort aimed at addressing the skills gap. In 2013, Chase kicked off the global program with a $15 million commitment to workforce readiness and demand-driven training in the Chicago region.

About JPMorgan Chase in the Chicago Region

JPMorgan Chase has nearly 14,000 employees in the Chicago region, making it one of the top employers in the metropolitan area. Chase has 337 branches and serves 3.4 million consumers and 243,500 small businesses in the region. The company provides more than $10 million annually in charitable contributions to area nonprofits focused on workforce readiness initiatives, financial capability building and small business growth.

About Advocate Health Care

Advocate Health Care is the largest health system in Illinois and one of the largest health care providers in the Midwest. Advocate operates more than 250 sites of care and 12 hospitals, including five of the nation’s 100 Top Hospitals, the state’s largest integrated children’s network, five Level I trauma centers (the state’s highest designation in trauma care), three Level II trauma centers, one of the area’s largest home health and hospice companies and one of the region’s largest medical groups. Advocate Health Care trains more primary care physicians and residents at its four teaching hospitals than any other health system in the state. As a not-for-profit, mission-based health system affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the United Church of Christ, Advocate contributed $783 million in charitable care and services to communities across Chicagoland and Central Illinois in 2014.