Denver’s job market is tough without help — so here come seven times more workforce centers

Let’s say you want a job and need help finding one. If you’re an adult living in Denver, there are four workforce centers to help you:

And if you’re a teen, there are three centers. That’s changing, though.

The Denver Office of Economic Development has decided to septuple the number of assistance centers, reports Next City Daily. (That increase includes youth services too. It’s not often that I get to describe a seven-fold increase — let me have just this one “septuple,” world.)

Spokesperson Derek Woodbury says that the transition began in July and all of the following centers should be online by next July.

Denver’s making this happen by contracting third-parties to provide workforce services in previously underserved parts of the city. That’s not been without criticism: 36 jobs were lost in the transition, noted the Denver Post.

As Next City presents it, the idea is that Denver’s job seekers shouldn’t have to come all the way downtown to access services.

“With this new system, [Denise Bryant, director of the OED’s workforce development program] says that a mother of five who’s out of work can take a skills-building course at a nearby high school computer lab. In the past, she would have had to find the time to drive downtown and walk into one of the city’s economic development offices, and petition for economic help in a room that “feels like a DMV,” she says.”

City officials told the Post in August that the change came because of new federal standards.

Either way, the new system means that the city hopes job placement will rise from 53 percent now to 90 percent in the future.