Despite cities' efforts to train their residents for workforce changes as automation threatens millions of jobs, they are struggling to equip their most vulnerable populations: African Americans and Latinos.

In a recent study released by the African American Mayors Association, which represents more than 500 African American mayors across the U.S., researchers examined three cities – Gary, Indiana; Columbia, South Carolina; and Long Beach, California – to see how successful they've been in preparing students and workers to succeed in the changing labor market. What they found: the initiatives aren't effectively reaching the populations most likely to lose their jobs to automation.

According to the report, between 9% and 47% of jobs will be lost to automation in the upcoming decades, but these job losses will most significantly affect people with lower education levels. People who identify as African American or Latino are less likely than whites to achieve more than a high school education, meaning that they are also more likely to hold a job threatened by automation.

Gary, Columbia and Long Beach have all implemented public secondary and postsecondary education programs to help people gain skills to secure a job during workforce changes, according to the report. For example, Gary allows high school students to dually enroll in high school and Ivy Tech Community College for up to 60 hours of college credit.

Indiana, South Carolina and California also offer workforce training programs meant to give workers additional skills for the changing workforce. Indiana's Next Level Jobs initiative, for instance, provides grants to help people pay for job training, and it also gives grants to employers to train individuals in high-priority areas.

Still, data shows that there is a major racial gap in educational attainment and participation in training programs.

In Gary, where African Americans comprise more than 80% of the high school population, African Americans only make up 21% of the student body at public technical colleges and 18% of the population at the local public university, according to the report.

And in Long Beach, 64% of white students were ready for college and careers in 2017, compared to 36% of Latino students and 30% of African American students.

Nearly a third of African American workers in Columbia have a job at high risk of automation, compared to 45% of Latino workers. In Gary, 46% of African American workers' jobs are considered at high risk of job automation, compared to 41% of Latino workers' jobs. In Long Beach those numbers are 32% and 50%, respectively.

Among the authors' recommendations are for cities to build pathways between secondary and postsecondary training and education, and for cities to develop data management systems to track the success of job training programs.