Watch the full video interview here.
Across rural America, headlines speak of labor shortages, talent pipelines broken and a lack of workers to meet employer demand. While these headlines may ring true in industrial corridors of the Midwest or the booming metros of the South, these assumptions don’t hold in rural Appalachia, specifically Eastern Kentucky.
Here they conceal a deeper and more important truth: the workforce isn’t missing, it’s been disconnected.
In Eastern Kentucky, the labor force participation rate for adults aged 25 to 54 hovers around ~50%, far below the national average of 83% (U.S. Census).
This means almost half of prime age working adults are not working, not actively seeking work, and not captured in official unemployment statistics. That’s not just a workforce gap; it’s a structural crisis. Tens of thousands of adults are missing from the economy. Not because they’ve disappeared, but because systems have failed to meet them where they are.
They’re the “hidden workforce.”
They are parents managing childcare responsibilities, individuals in recovery from substance use disorder, adults without credentials, people with past justice involvement, and rural residents discouraged by years of economic instability, exclusion and system neglect.
Most importantly, they are NOT liabilities.
Rather than treating these individuals as liabilities, the EKY Runway Program sees them as the region’s greatest untapped economic asset. This article explores how re-engaging the hidden workforce through the EKY Runway Program’s strategic, human-centered approach is not just a workforce strategy, it’s an economic development imperative.
By reframing disengagement as a solvable systems challenge, not an individual failure, economic development leaders can unlock new growth pathways rooted in inclusion, resilience, and purpose.
Who is the Hidden Workforce?
The hidden workforce is made up of people who are in their prime working years (ages 25–54), but aren’t employed and not actively looking for work. Reasons for disconnection vary, but they tend to fall into several categories:
- Health and recovery challenges (including substance use disorder, trauma, and mental health conditions)
- Justice system involvement (incarceration history, probation, or ongoing legal restrictions)
- Caregiving responsibilities (especially among women and single parents lacking childcare support)
- Credentialing and skills gaps
- Lack of access to transportation or broadband
- Discouragement from repeated workforce rejection or system neglect
In 12 of the most coal impacted counties of Eastern Kentucky, estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor Statistics, and local intake data suggest about 34,000 adults fall into this category.
It’s important to point out that this group is not unmotivated.
Many are eager to work, learn, or contribute, but face these systemic barriers that prevent reentry — barriers many take for granted. They represent not just a pool of potential workers, but a river of economic hope if systems are aligned to meet them where they are.
From Deficit to Asset: An Economic Development Mindset Shift
As an Economic Recovery Corps Fellow, I was initially drawn to the program for the promise of advancing new ways of doing economic development that promote economic resilience and transformative change.
Economic developers often focus on attracting outside employers and improving physical infrastructure. But in a region where population loss is chronic, those efforts must be paired with strategies to stabilize and grow the internal population.
That means rethinking disconnected individuals not as burdens, but as builders of the region’s future.
This mindset shift is something at the heart of the EKY Runway Program and the reasoning behind the new collaborative, capacity-building initiative that is the Economic Recovery Corps.
Why does this shift matter?
- Demographic necessity: Many rural counties are aging rapidly. Without prime-age workers, schools shrink, tax bases erode, and local businesses can’t survive.
- Economic potential: Even modest reattachment of the hidden workforce can yield billions in lifetime earnings and regional GDP.
- Social impact: Reconnection improves family stability, reduces recidivism, and boosts community engagement.
In short, reengaging the hidden workforce isn’t a social program. It’s an economic strategy and a new way of thinking about advancement and rural revitalization.
Focus: The Economic Case for Reattachment
If even a third of the hidden workforce’s estimated population in the EKY Runway Program were to re-enter the labor market, the implications would be profound:
- About 12,000 new workers entering the regional economy
- At an average wage of $15/hour, this translates into over $374.4 million in annual wages
- With a conservative 10% tax contribution, that’s $37.44 million in new annual tax revenue
- Ripple effects in housing, consumer demand, local entrepreneurship, and civic engagement are also potential if not absolute impacts.
And these numbers are just the floor.
The real ceiling comes when we consider lifelong earnings, wealth accumulation, and intergenerational impact. Every person reattached is a step toward reversing rural decline.
The impact, however, extends well beyond numbers.
The ripple effects of reattachment helps stabilize schools, reduce incarceration rates, drive local entrepreneurship and consumer demand, increase civic participation, and reverse population loss (a growing crisis in rural America and one that has been a challenge in Eastern Kentucky for decades).
That’s not just workforce policy, it’s economic transformation.
The Eastern Kentucky Approach: Meeting People Where They Are
The EKY Runway Program is designed specifically to reach, re-engage, and retain the hidden workforce. Its model, designed by Shaping Our Appalachian Region, has a broad range of implementation but rests on these focused areas:
Human Navigation as Infrastructure
The traditional workforce model assumes people are ready to plug into opportunities if only they can access a training program. The EKY Runway Program experience proves otherwise: reattachment requires navigation, stabilization, and belief.
When people are treated with dignity, given trusted guides, and shown clear, tangible steps toward a better future, reentry becomes not only possible, but likely.
Every participant is matched with a trauma-informed Empowerment Coach. These coaches aren’t case managers. They’re long-term navigators, stabilizers, and trusted advisors.
Coaching is continuous and relational, not transactional. They don’t just help a client reach initial employment; they stay with that person through career development.
Along the journey, they may help to:
- Secure transportation, housing, and legal aid
- Navigate recovery and mental health systems
- Apply for benefits, IDs, or childcare
- Build confidence and clarity around career goals
- Stay engaged through setbacks
Research has shown this type of proactive engagement and coaching can help to drive overall client success and reduce disengagement.
Training and Skills-Based Learning
Through key regional partnerships that focus on training, the EKY Runway Program has designed short-term, industry recognized credential programs.
Some key design elements we’re focused on are:
- Length of programming: This ranged from short pathways of a few weeks to semester courses obtained through the Community College system.
- Flexible formats: It was important to conduct programming that would meet people where they are, whether that meant in-person at times of convenience, virtual, or a hybrid approach.
- Employer-informed curriculum: Each pathway was designed with direct feedback from the industry and with the employer in mind to connect participants to direct opportunities in the region.
- Embedded supports for participants: The EKY Runway Program provides 100 percent wraparound support for participants every step of the way.
These training courses weren’t done from a broad scope, but focused on the assets of the region and what would be the most impactful for the future of employment in Eastern Kentucky. Some areas of focus have been in skill trades and logistics, clean energy and construction, healthcare, artificial intelligence and remote work.
Employers, Partnerships, and a Talent-Driven Network
Regional partnerships build the foundation of the EKY Runway Program.
Typically, participants who are initially coming to the program don’t need immediate employment. The focus is on stabilization.
The EKY Runway Program works with partners throughout the region to help each individual overcome their barriers to employment. Each client’s journey is different and significant, and the key to employment is truly understanding that journey at the human level. This level of engagement and client discovery leads to a partner-driven approach to stabilization and career development.
With career development needs in mind, employers aren’t just end-users of talent. They’re co-designers of transformation.
Once stabilized, clients can enter the Eastern Kentucky Talent Network: A human-centered, systems-based approach to job placement. The EKY Talent Network works with each individual client to understand their needs and support them on the career pathway and connection to direct employers in the region.
In addition, this programming works with regional businesses to create pre and registered apprenticeships, job-shadowing, internships, and reentry hiring pathways that are recovery-informed and justice-inclusive.
Shared Data, Learning, and Accountability
Performance-based data is extremely important to the overall success of the EKY Runway Program.
Data isn’t just used for reporting, but for real-time decision-making and continuous learning. More importantly, the shared data platform tracks participant progress across time: enrollment, training, job placement, and retention. Not only does this allow for continuous learning, but for real-time accountability.
The initial results have already spoken volumes.
Participants who once felt invisible are earning credentials, landing direct employment, and contributing to their communities. They’re becoming visible again.
Economic development has long valued broadband, roads, and incentives. Proactive guidance and coaching, recovery-friendly workplaces, flexible credentials, and cross-sector data platforms are every bit as vital to a region’s future as a new bypass or industrial park.
If rural America wants to attract jobs, retain families, and grow its base, it must build systems that support human complexity, not just industrial simplicity. The EKY Runway Program is a leading example of how rural regions can re-engage the hidden workforce through a systems-based, human-centered approach.
Its foundational theory of change is simple: people don’t fail programs, programs fail to see people.
Early Outcomes By the Numbers
These figures from the first five months of operations point not only to individual success, but to systems change: the hidden workforce is no longer hidden.
Not Just the Numbers: A Client’s Journey
The EKY Runway Program is more than just the numbers. It’s the human side of things that makes the program so impactful.
One example of this human aspect is a single mother in recovery who had spent years disconnected from the workforce. Frustrated with overall workforce system navigation, she connected with an EKY Runway Program Empowerment Coach who suggested she take the first step of filling out an online application.
Not knowing where that first step might lead, she worked diligently hand-in-hand with the Empowerment Coach toward career stabilization over months, dedicating herself to professional growth and skill development. She obtained multiple certifications through partner organizations and enrolled in educational classes to earn certifications in culinary arts.
She overcame the cost of transportation by obtaining gas card assistance through partner organizations. Partners also worked with her to get work attire to ensure she was fully prepared for interviews and employment. She recently was offered a full-time position at an above-stabilization wage with opportunity for growth that also allows her to complete her coursework.
The client expressed excitement and reflected on the Empowerment Coach’s encouragement that the hard work put into preparing for the workforce would pay off in the long run. She stated she was shocked at how quickly her journey moved toward achieving her career goals and family stability.
Her story is one of dozens.
The transformation is not just economic. It’s emotional, communal, and generational for her family.
Policy and Practice Implications
If we want to scale programs nationwide, we must align funding, policy, and metrics around reattachment, not just job creation. Specifically, scaling the EKY Runway Program requires more than goodwill.
It requires intentional policy alignment, funding flexibility, and metrics that matter. Here’s what it could take:
Fund Coaching as Infrastructure
Empowerment coaching should be considered on par with broadband or roads.
- Recognize coaching as vital economic infrastructure
- Allow WIOA, TANF, and other funds to cover coaching
- Embed coaches in housing authorities, schools, recovery centers and other institutional organizations in order to meet people where they are
Expand Stabilization Funds
Flexible, directly controlled funds make all the difference between dropout and retention.
Among the many uses, these funds are critical in the overall success of a client’s journey and can help support transportation and repair needs, childcare gaps, work tools and uniforms, expungement services, and utility shut-off prevention. The EKY Runway Program focuses on a list of dedicated uses with pre-subscribed amounts of usage.
Even small investments prevent program attrition.
Redefine Success Metrics
Traditional metrics fail to capture reattachment and miss the mark in highly disconnected regions. New measures should include:
- Labor force participation rate change (ages 25–54)
- Workforce reattachment and retention
- Income mobility and retention
- Job training and connection to direct employment
- The impact of stabilization funding
Success isn’t just about the number of jobs filled, but about who gets to fill them.
Incentivize Inclusive Hiring
Employers who build pipelines for second-chance hiring should be rewarded. Opportunities could include:
- Providing tax credits or wage subsidies for employers hiring from the hidden workforce
- Embedding inclusive hiring in local economic development grant criteria
- Building public recognition for second-chance employers
This shifts risk, rewards inclusion, and builds trust between employers and the community.
Build Regional Learning Ecosystems
Don’t just fund programs, fund ecosystems.
- Invest in shared data platforms, peer learning cohorts, and localized evaluation
- Engage third-party researchers to study long-term return on investment
- Document alumni journeys to inform policy and narrative change
Conclusion: Reclaiming What’s Been Lost
The hidden workforce has been here all along.
What’s been missing is a system willing to see them, invest in them, and walk alongside them. In regions like Eastern Kentucky where every person counts, this shift in perspective could mean the difference between decline and renewal.
The EKY Runway Program is proving that with the right scaffolding (coaching, focused training, community, and employer partnerships), disconnection isn’t a permanent condition. It’s a temporary systems failure that can be corrected.
By reframing the hidden workforce as Appalachia’s greatest untapped economic engine, we begin to build a future rooted not in scarcity, but in possibility.
In a region where every person counts, we can no longer afford to let tens of thousands remain sidelined. Reattachment is the work of population recovery, economic growth, and social renewal.
This is not just a rural story.
It’s a blueprint for national renewal in the face of declining participation and population loss. When we stop asking “Where did everyone go?” and start asking “How do we bring them back?” that’s when transformation begins.
Next Month Preview:
Next month, we’ll explore and focus on the role of empowerment coaching in turning disconnection into engagement, and how human navigation is the most overlooked infrastructure in workforce development.
Last Month’s Article: The Great Reattachment: Uniting Workforce and Economic Development to Revitalize Rural America
About the Author
Will Warren was born and raised in Eastern Kentucky and professionally has worked for almost two decades in various capacities to create economic and community development opportunities. An expert in small community economic redevelopment, he is a recent graduate of the Appalachian Leadership Institute (ALI), a Certified Economic Developer (CEcD) and an Entrepreneurship Development Professional (EDP). He currently has focused his professional work as a consultant revitalizing distressed and underdeveloped communities throughout the Appalachian region and beyond. Throughout his career he has managed public and private development projects in a variety of domestic locations (both large and small as well as urban and rural) and has experience at the local, regional, state, and federal levels focused on financial analysis and feasibility, sustainable growth and equitable community investment.
Learn more about Will and the Economic Recovery Corps Fellows.