Governor Newsom’s statewide Jobs First investments created more than 61,000 jobs, trained more than 142,000 workers in 2025

California Jobs First: Bold vision, realized locally

In 2021, Governor Newsom launched a statewide economic development planning process which became California Jobs First in 2023. The objective was to create good-paying, accessible jobs and sustainable economic growth across the state’s 13 regions, with each region launching a planning body — or collaborative — with representation from a wide variety of community partners, including labor, business, local government, education, environmental justice, community organizations, and more. The collaboratives then wrote their own data-driven, community-led economic plans, including identifying strategic industry sectors.

Launched in early 2025, the California Jobs First Economic Blueprint laid out a statewide economic vision anchored in ten strategic industry sectors and informed by those 13 region-specific plans. Since then, funding has flowed into communities across California, growing the economy and creating job opportunities up and down the state. 

Notable state investments and activities from the past year include:

✅Regional Investment Initiative:  

• Implementation Phase: In August 2025 $80 million was awarded to 11 projects spanning 7 regions as part of the Regional Investment Initiative’s first phase of implementation funding. Funding was awarded to four project clusters, focused on sectors including aerospace and defense, life sciences, agtech and farm equipment. 
• Tribal Phase: In June 2025, the state awarded $15 million to 14 California Native American tribes to support economic development initiatives, job training programs, environmental stewardship projects, business growth and research and development. 
• Wildfire Relief: In February 2025, $3 million was awarded to the LA Jobs First Collaborative to support the region in recovering from the wildfires that impacted the Altadena and Pacific Palisades communities. This funding is supporting a campaign to promote the local tourism industry and small businesses community, as well as quarterly comprehensive economic impact reporting and analysis. 

✅California Competes Tax Credit: Over the course of 2025, California awarded tax credits to 21 companies choosing to expand or relocate in the state, spurring $2.56 billion in capital investment and creating 4,591 new jobs. 

✅California Film & Television Tax Credit: In 2025, tax credits were awarded to 155 film and television projects, which are collectively expected to generate nearly $5 billion in economic activity and 33,391 cast and crew jobs across 6,292 filming days.

✅Employment Training Panel: In 2025, the panel invested over $82 million through 299 contracts with California businesses to support the training of 70,544 workers.  

✅ Apprenticeships: The Department of Industrial Relations (DIR) and its Division of Apprenticeship Standards (DAS) awarded over $91 million in 2025 to expand apprenticeship opportunities, benefiting more than 69,000 apprentices and pre-apprentices. 

✅ High Road Training Partnerships (HRTP): The 2025 HRTP investment of $18.5 million aims to increase access to existing High Road jobs for underserved populations and create pathways for incumbent workers seeking job growth with High Road employers. These projects will train over 3,100 workers and are tailored to focus on one or more of the strategic sectors in their region(s) as identified in the Jobs First Blueprint. 

✅California State Trade Expansion Program (STEP): Throughout the 2025 federal fiscal year, STEP grants supported 204 California small businesses, resulting in a reported $33 million in export sales and the creation or retention of 254 jobs. These export activities took place on every continent except Antarctica, highlighting the global reach of California’s small business community. 

✅“Bet” Sector Investments: California is doubling down on its emerging “bet” sectors, including fusion and quantum. In November 2025, the state launched Quantum California, a new statewide initiative uniting government, academia and industry to accelerate quantum innovation, grow jobs and secure California’s leadership in this critical field. November also saw the first major gathering of the state’s fusion ecosystem at the 2025 California Fusion Energy Convening, signaling significant momentum in another frontier technology sector.

“This year showed what California can accomplish when state agencies, regional collaboratives and local partners rally around shared priorities,” said GO-Biz Director Dee Dee Myers. “Jobs First is aligning sector investments and business development in ways that create measurable, lasting impact for communities up and down the state. The progress made in 2025 is only the beginning, and we look forward to supporting the next wave of high-impact projects across all thirteen regions.”

“Through California Jobs First, we’re strengthening the pathways that connect people to stable careers in growing industries. In 2025, we expanded training, apprenticeship, and regional partnerships across California,” said Stewart Knox, Secretary of the Labor & Workforce Development Agency. “This year, we’re scaling that work so more Californians can access clear routes into good-paying jobs.”

All these key investments from 2025 build on more than $286 million in prior years’ funding through the Regional Investment Initiative. 

Advancing state-of-the-art sectors in Orange County 

Today’s event, hosted at Medtronic, celebrated the implementation of Orange County’s Jobs First regional plan, which identified life science, high-tech, advanced and precision manufacturing and travel and tourism as priority sectors for their region.

The medical device technology (medtech) industry is a critical sector for the continued success and growth of Orange County’s regional economy, employing more than 21,000 workers. Across the state, there are more than 13,600 medtech companies, accounting for more than 30% of the medical device industry revenue across the United States.