Allegheny Conference summit focuses on economic recovery from pandemic

An economic summit focused on restoring the Pittsburgh region’s economy to pre-pandemic levels was held last week by the Allegheny Conference on Community Development.

As part of the summit, the organization prepared a robust report on how severely the region’s economy has been disrupted during the pandemic. The report did not paint a pretty picture, identifying lost employment opportunities and widening social disparities, threats to higher education capacity and risks to the region’s amenities and livability as problem areas.

It also proposed solutions — such as developing small and mid-sized business relief resources — to offset the effects of the economic downturn.

The organization’s goal is to restore employment levels and economic productivity across all relevant sectors to pre-pandemic levels.

Allegheny Conference CEO Stefani Pashman said it’s important to first categorize the challenge so that they are clear on what the disruptions have been.

“The question is, how will businesses and organization re-invent themselves and do we have to think about some comprehensive re-skilling and retraining strategies?” said Pashman.

“The other piece of this is that 80% of people work for small businesses and we need to see those businesses come back to life. Not having another form of stimulus to keep them alive for the trajectory of the pandemic creates a definite need for assisting more creatively to help out small businesses,” she said.

It’s a matter of figuring how to re-stabilize institutions, Pashman said.

While they’ve come up with a lot of ideas there is still no specific action plan in place for small business revitalization.

“What we’re doing now is getting people to the table with the expertise, trying to get the resources and figure out how to move that forward,” Pashman said.

The unprecedented nature of this economic collapse has made solving the problem that much more of a challenge said Pashman.

“Any other downturns we’ve seen in the past may have hit one industry or one region and so they were a lot easier in terms of developing solutions and developing tools to really focus support,” Pashman said. “This is so broad based and global, the resources can only go so far. Government dollars are limited and we’re going to have to be very judicious and create a framework for solving this.”

Allegheny Conference chief research and strategy officer Vera Krekanova said there is no quick and easy solution.

“We’ve seen signs of recovery already and some parts of the economy are recovering strongly,” said Krekanova. “But some parts of the economy are not done declining yet so we can’t say we’ll be fine by the second or third quarter of 2021.”