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Outlet profile

Good Jobs First

U.S. left-of-center

Owned byIndependent nonprofit; no parent company or private owner. Incorporated as a 501(c)(3) and governed by its own board.
FundingFoundation grants and labor union contributions. In fiscal year 2024, funders included the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Surdna Foundation, the Amalgamated Charitable Foundation, and unions including the UAW ($60,000), AFSCME ($50,000), and the Teamsters ($20,000). Total annual operating budget was approximately $1.8 million in 2024.
On the administrationbroadly critical

Background

Good Jobs First was founded in 1998 by Greg LeRoy after he won the Stern Family Fund's Public Interest Pioneer Award, which provided seed funding for the organization. For more than two decades, LeRoy served as executive director and built the group into the country's leading tracker of state and local economic development subsidies. The organization is best known for two large public databases: Subsidy Tracker, which catalogs hundreds of billions of dollars in government grants and tax breaks to corporations, and Violation Tracker, which compiles federal regulatory and criminal penalties against companies since 2000. Good Jobs First has produced more than 125 reports criticizing corporate welfare, weak labor standards, and insufficient accountability for publicly subsidized businesses. Its funding base — dominated by unions such as the UAW, AFSCME, and Teamsters, alongside progressive philanthropies — reflects and reinforces its left-of-center orientation. Allan Freyer was named to lead the organization as its next executive director following LeRoy's tenure. The group has consistently opposed tax incentive packages that it argues enrich corporations without delivering lasting community benefits, a posture that puts it squarely against both Republican and some Democratic economic development orthodoxy, though its sharpest criticisms align with opposition to the deregulatory and anti-labor direction of the Trump administration's second term.

Sources

  1. About - Good Jobs First
  2. History - Good Jobs First
  3. Good Jobs First - Influence Watch
  4. Good Jobs First - Nonprofit Explorer - ProPublica
  5. Dr. Allan Freyer Named to Lead National Watchdog Good Jobs First
  6. Databases - Good Jobs First
  7. GOOD JOBS FIRST Grants & Funding (EIN 82-0542649)

Profile compiled 2026-09-23; refreshed when ownership, funding, or the administration changes.

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