Place-based initiative celebrates six achievements for its sixth anniversary

In 2022, Congress passed The Rebuilding Economies and Creating Opportunities for More People to Excel (RECOMPETE) Act,which will allocate $200 million to persistently distressed communities toward grassroots efforts to create and connect people to good jobs. Policy recommendations stemming from the initiative's economic distress research directly influenced this legislation.

Our research shows that federal investments should target areas where employment rates for prime-working-age individuals (those ages 25 to 54) are low. It also demonstrates the benefits of targeting job creation in distressed places are nearly four times that of targeting job creation in booming places. The first phase of the RECOMPETE program, administered by the Economic Development Administration (EDA), received 565 applications for four to 8 spots, the largest applicant pool of any national EDA competition to date.