Google, BlackRock, Ford Motors, and Carhartt have announced a collective skilled workforce training initiative called the Alliance for America’s Skilled Trades, which aims to help meet the growing demand for skilled trades workers across the US.
Rather than forming a new funding pool, the four founding members will build upon their already announced independent commitments to skilled workforce training schemes across 30 US states. The new alliance will focus on three key areas: strengthening pipelines for skilled trades, scaling proven effective training approaches, and inviting a wide range of partners to collaborate to broaden its reach nationwide.
The founders said the initiative was important for training the next generation of America’s skilled workers and for filling anticipated gaps, with Google and BlackRock reiterating estimates that 2.1 million skilled trades jobs could go unfilled by 2030.
Jim Farley, president and CEO of Ford, said: “We recognize the skilled trades workforce shortage is a national crisis but also a generational opportunity.”
The founding members have stressed the importance of skilled trades in underpinning essential American industries including energy, infrastructure, and manufacturing, with Google highlighting examples of welders and pipefitters fitting complex cooling infrastructure for data centers and fiber technicians and electricians crucial to powering advanced network grids.
