Bay Area Chamber summarizes Hay Bay City workforce and marketing activity for first half of 2025

At the Bay City Commission s July 7 meeting, Sarah Parker and Annabelle Schweiger of the Bay Area Chamber of Commerce presented the first- and second-quarter reports for Hay Bay City, the chamber s workforce and placemaking platform.

Parker, who covered workforce development, said Hay Bay City had 214 employers signed up on the platform as of the end of quarter two, 226 jobs posted and 42,143 job views across Q1 and Q2. She reported 1,343 pply—licks and 41 resumes received through the platform s Typeform-based application route; staff noted that some employers direct applicants to their own websites rather than taking applications through the Hay Bay City platform. Parker said she provided individualized job-seeker support and had made 53 face-to-face employer or partner meetings in Q1 and Q2.

Parker presented a budget breakdown for the Hay Bay City program showing marketing at about $13,000 and community outreach at about $3,000, within a listed total of $67,000 for the period. She said the program s end-of-quarter-2 balance with the city was $118,693.95.

Schweiger, the chamber s marketing communications manager, summarized website and social analytics: the chamber s site received about 123,000 views with roughly 40,000 unique users in the first half of the year; the average session duration was about 2 minutes, 11 seconds. Job-page views for Q1 and Q2 combined were approximately 87,000; the largest traffic sources were direct search, paid search and organic search, and the majority of job-page views came from Bay City, Ashburn (Virginia) and Detroit.

Schweiger reported combined social metrics across Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn totaling about 1,280,000 views and over 17,000 followers, along with 3,730 email subscribers and nearly 1,300 SMS subscribers. The chamber highlighted partnerships with Bay City Public Schools (work-based learning advisory council), SVSU (employer recruitment partnership), Great Lakes Bay Michigan Works and Bay Future. The chamber will participate in a Tri-Share childcare summit in October and presented at the Connecting Entrepreneurial Communities Conference in May on bridging skills gaps.

Commissioners asked about local sourcing for promotional merchandise; staff said notebooks were from ATS Printing and shirts from Sandlot Sports and that the items were paid from the marketing budget. A commissioner asked about the dip in site traffic; Schweiger said the chamber intentionally reduced Google ad spend earlier in the year and was prioritizing organic acquisition.

What s next: Chamber staff said they will continue the Hay Bay City employer outreach, job-seeker assistance and marketing work. Commissioners thanked the chamber for the report and encouraged continued collaboration with local schools and workforce partners.