An Economic and Fiscal Impact Study of the International Professionals Program of the Welcoming Center for New Pennsylvanians

In 2014, the Welcoming Center for New Pennsylvanians launched the International Professionals Program (IPP) to help underemployed and unemployed foreign-trained immigrants reach their full employment and earnings potential. The program is targeted to foreign-educated professionals and is focused on enabling participants to secure professional employment.

IPP provides nine weeks of intensive training which includes identifying transferable skills, writing resumes, applying for jobs, learning how to successfully interview, and designing career plans, among others. It aims to help highly-educated, highly-skilled immigrants reach their full employment and earnings potential and position participants to compete in a college-labor market rather than a high-school labor market.

Econsult Solutions, Inc. (ESI) was commissioned in 2018 to conduct an economic and fiscal impact study of IPP by measuring increased earnings from helping participants obtain jobs that match their skill and education level, with their new wage-level generating new household income. The report also calculated the program’s return on investment. ESI found that each annual cohort of IPP participants is estimated to earn an additional $15.9 million over the course of 10 years, with $14.9 million being earned inside Philadelphia. This is estimated to generate $13.4 million in economic impact in Philadelphia and an additional $1.2 million in economic impact in Pennsylvania. Additionally, this supports 85 additional jobs throughout the city and 8 elsewhere in the state.

This new household income and additional economic output will generate new taxes for the City of Philadelphia and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Over 10 years, it is estimated that the City government will see a net gain of $563,000 in tax revenues and the Commonwealth government will receive a total of $549,000 in tax revenues.