A Better Bakersfield and Boundless Kern
A regional collaborative to achieve inclusive growth and deep prosperity.
More Quality Jobs
Fewer Struggling Families
Equity and Inclusion
Working together for enduring regional prosperity.
In 2020, a quantitative market assessment of the Bakersfield-Kern County region found that more than half of residents struggle to make ends meet. More than a third of all local residents belong to struggling working families, where workers do not earn enough from their job to achieve self-sufficiency.
B3K Prosperity is a collaboration among business, government and civic stakeholders. Our purpose is to expand access to Quality Jobs for all of our neighbors, so that everyone in the Bakersfield/Kern County has the opportunity to achieve upward economic mobility.
Our Goal: Creating 100,000 more Quality Jobs by 2031 and developing pathways to access them.
In 2021, B3K Prosperity established an ambitious goal to cut in half the number of local children in struggling families by 2031. In order to achieve this goal, our regional economy needs 99,500 additional Quality Jobs. That means growing or upgrading 30 percent of our existing jobs base. Unless we increase the number of Quality Jobs and expand access to them, too many of our neighbors will continue to struggle with self-sufficiency.
Deep Prosperity: Equitable and Inclusive Economic Growth
We need to ensure that workers from all races, ethnicities and genders have the education, experience and access needed to achieve a Quality Job. Within races, non-white workers have much higher percentages of struggling workers.
Our focus on achieving Deep Prosperity is intended to address and significantly narrow these disparities in the years to come, leading to widespread economic improvement for families all over the region. Our Deep Prosperity Council leads the effort to ensure that B3K initiatives and priorities reflect the needs and lived experiences of disadvantaged communities and people of color.
Opportunity Industries
We’ve identified four opportunity industries where we can be most competitive for investment and growth, and where the share of Quality Jobs is the highest. We’ve launched Implementation Teams for each Opportunity Industry (and a fifth for Entrepreneurship) to drive advocacy, action and investment that leads to regional growth and dynamism. Learn more about our Opportunity Industries and opportunities to join an Implementation Team.
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