Join us for our installment of the Pacesetters Doing Business series featuring Mass General Brigham on August 7, 2025.
08/07/2025
1:00pm - 2:00pm
Virtual
The BIMA Summer Sizzler is a chance to network with your digital media industry peers from the agency, publisher, and adtech community!
08/14/2025
6:00pm - 9:00pm
Fenway Park
Join Boston’s leading educators and industry experts to explore career-aligned high school programs, in-demand workplace skills, and innovative school partnerships driving student success
07/17/2025
9:00am - 11:00am
Omni Boston Hotel Seaport
This program is in redevelopment. Click this page for DEI resources.
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For almost 40 years, Boston has led the nation in supplying high school students with paid internships and meaningful work experiences. Since 1982, the Mayor’s Summer Jobs Campaign, in partnership with the Boston Private Industry Council (PIC), has been recruiting private sector companies to hire Boston Public School (BPS) students for summer internships.
The Mayor’s Summer Jobs Campaign not only provides young people with meaningful work experiences that support entry or advancement in a particular industry area – it also builds a local talent pipeline from neighborhoods across Boston. Annually, the campaign generates over 8,000 paid summer jobs and internships for Boston’s youth at community-based organizations and public agencies, as well as private companies and institutions.
While these efforts have persisted over the last four decades, youth employment is significantly lower in America today: about a third of young people are working now compared to the turn of the century when over half of youth had paid employment. The COVID-19 pandemic has sharpened this decline locally, reducing the number of private sector summer internships in Boston from 1,150 in 2019 to just 655 in 2021. While Boston’s private sector internship program employs 90 percent students of color, the same cannot be said for the youth labor market overall. It is these young people that are most likely to be affected by declines in employment.
We find ourselves at a significant moment, battling a stubborn pandemic that has worsened inequities and facing a national reckoning that has laid bare the ills of systemic racism.
It will require unrivaled private sector participation not only to replace the summer internships lost over the past two years, but also to tackle the systemic inequities at the root of the racial disparities in opportunity. The only way we can achieve true racial equity in the workforce is to move past rhetoric and make real change. Boston’s private sector internship program makes a significant contribution to the pursuit of racial equity. When we help BPS students connect the dots between school and work, we empower them to visualize college and career pathways previously invisible or unattainable.
The good news is that Boston has the infrastructure and resources to confront and address these issues head on.
Many employers understand that internships provide a critical introduction to the workforce for young people and that early professional experiences build essential skills like communication and problem solving. Many also understand that Boston Public School (BPS) students bring cultural wealth to the workplace through their knowledge, skills, and abilities to navigate in the face of systemic barriers.
Private sector employers that value the tremendous assets of our city’s students and invest in developing their skills today will be prepared to address the challenges of tomorrow. Those who don’t provide work-based learning opportunities for Boston Public School students today will lose the opportunity to prepare for the changing demographics of the future workforce – a situation that increases racial inequality as well as skill shortages.
Boston is one of six U.S. cities selected by JPMorgan Chase to receive $7 million of a $35 million philanthropic investment. The effort known as “New Skills Boston” is aimed at developing equitable career pathways and policies that give Boston Public School students access to post-secondary learning opportunities and real-world work experiences while in high school, thereby supporting an inclusive economic recovery and advancing racial equity.
EdVestors and the Boston Private Industry Council are partnering with Boston Public Schools, Bunker Hill Community College, UMass Boston, Massachusetts Executive Office of Education, The Boston Foundation, and the City of Boston’s Office of Workforce Development to meet the ambitious goals of this initiative.
Those who don’t provide work-based learning opportunities for Boston Public School students today will lose the opportunity to prepare for the changing demographics of the future workforce – a situation that increases racial inequality as well as skill shortages.
This notable investment of resources will help ensure the pipeline of students is ready to take advantage of learning from and in the engines of Boston’s economy. This provides a renewed impetus for the Boston business community to prioritize the city’s public school students for internships and other work based learning experiences. The New Skills Boston partners are ready to work with employers to make this happen.
As the new school year ramps up, we must start planning for summer 2022 now. We can mark 40 years of providing work-based learning opportunities with the private sector stepping up in a renewed and larger way. Preparing a high-quality internship experience – whether in-person, hybrid or remote – requires thoughtful planning and an investment of time and resources. The PIC stands ready to assist in developing job descriptions, leading recruitment and training, and troubleshooting logistical issues to accommodate any format or setting.
Building a skilled and prepared homegrown workforce is not only the equitable thing to do, but also the most cost-effective. Investing in BPS students is not only the right thing to do, but also a great business practice. As we prepare for the summer of 2022, with an eye toward the future, Boston’s private sector can get this right and reassert our city as a national model that truly leads by example.
Our guest blogs are written and produced by organizations within our membership. They are not intended to reflect the views nor opinions of the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce.
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