A successful workforce nonprofit leans into tech-adjacent job training with a skilled-trades flavor. Also, nascent research on how many jobs data centers will create, innovative funding to prepare workers for entry-level manufacturing roles, a new AI jobs hub led by New York City’s Pursuit, and an essay calling for new models for tech education as AI alters career paths in the industry. (Subscribe here.)

Bringing Classrooms Closer to People

As the job market shifts, Per Scholas is shifting with it. The well-established workforce nonprofit has been adding training tracks for careers in data centers while expanding its now 25+ locations.

Per Scholas has been successful with tech training for the past 30 years. Its no-cost programs across IT, cybersecurity, software development, and data analytics typically can be completed in 15 weeks. They are designed for lower-income people who are unemployed or underemployed, and most participants lack a four-year college degree.

A growing body of research backs the model, which has driven sustained income and employment gains for its roughly 35K participants.

Five years ago Per Scholas began bringing training programs to satellite locations beyond its physical campuses. By partnering and sharing learning spaces with community-based organizations and public agencies, the group can be nimble about filling needs in new communities.

“We’re bringing our classrooms closer to the people,” says Caitlyn Brazill, the president of Per Scholas, who will take over as CEO in January, when Plinio Ayala steps down after a 28-year run.

For example, she points to a new satellite classroom on Chicago’s South Side. Per Scholas has a campus in the Loop downtown. But that’s a long haul for working learners on the South Side. To meet that need, the new training site is located at the Gary Comer Youth Center in the Greater Grand Crossing neighborhood. It’s offered in partnership with Xchange Chicago, which was created by the Comer Science & Education Foundation, P33, and SDI Presence, an IT services company headquartered in Chicago.

Per Scholas leans heavily on its 1K+ employer partners to inform the structure of its training tracks and to try to ensure that graduates can land well-paying jobs. During the past decade, for example, Per Scholas learners have been matched with 1,300+ jobs through the partnership with TEKsystems, which emphasized data center roles and has deep relationships with Big Tech.

“That was where we saw the real opportunity on the IT side with data centers,” says Brazill, the organization’s president and former chief revenue officer. “The demand is really high.”

Per Scholas launched its first critical facilities technician training program in Atlanta in May, through a partnership with Microsoft. It added one in Columbus, Ohio, and later announced plans to expand to other markets with financial backing through a multiyear grant from the Equinix Foundation and with support from Focusing Philanthropy. Per Scholas also offers courses for low-voltage and cabling technicians.

A few months ago, I checked out the Per Scholas campus here in Columbus. It’s one of 20 nonprofits located in a community center downtown, which was created by the United Way of Central Ohio and Nationwide.

“We’re really trying to be intentional and responsive to the job market,” says Jenn Fowler Howard, senior director of Per Scholas Columbus. “We are going to move with the jobs here.”

Greater Columbus is home to 166 data centers, more than half of the 240 across Ohio. The Per Scholas campus here now offers hybrid courses for AI-enabled healthcare IT technicians, AI-enabled IT support, and data center technicians with AI tools. The 15-week critical facilities technician course is in-person, with hands-on preparation for workers to help keep data centers and other essential facilities powered, cooled, and running safely.

The path is unique, Howard says, with training that stretches across programming, safety, and electrician-adjacent work. “It’s skilled trades with breadth rather than depth.”

Upstream Jobs: Data centers are overwhelmingly unpopular. And the backlash to their development has become one of the most powerful political forces of this election cycle.

Research remains spotty on the impacts of data centers on the workforce. Durable gains are certainly small in the context of historically massive spending on the AI buildout, with most new jobs created being short-term and construction-related. One recent study found that a county sees an estimated 100–200 jobs from a new facility, depending on the type of data center. Another finds that a data center’s activation increases local employment by 3.5%.

The numbers might be larger for newer, hyperscale versions in the pipeline. And the opposition to data center projects has led tech companies to offer bigger investments in communities, including for workforce training.

For example, a $15B data center project from Google in Missouri will create “hundreds of direct, long-term operational roles once the facility is up and running,” according to a statement from Mike Kehoe, the state’s Republican governor. And OpenAI says a planned data center in southern Ohio is expected to create 2,500 longer-term operating roles on top of 35K construction jobs.

New research, however, estimates that the current pace of data center construction could sustain more than 300K U.S. manufacturing jobs in the upstream supply chain. Well-designed industrial policy can further magnify these job gains, according to a policy brief published this week by Stanford University’s Institute for Economic Policy Research.

Treating the Employer as a Customer

Per Scholas also is moving to prepare jobseekers for roles in advanced manufacturing. Its first training program for entry-level careers in manufacturing and industrial technology is slated for Milwaukee, with financial support from the Campbell’s Company.

Last week Work Shift ran an essay that described an intriguing model for recruiting and training jobseekers for operator manufacturing roles in northeast Ohio. WorkAdvance combines industry credentials, on-the-job training, and job coaching to prepare entry-level workers, wrote Matt Latimer, a director at Social Finance. The program is delivered by MAGNET, a Cleveland-based nonprofit, and the local Manufacturing Extension Partnership.

“Participating employers who hire MAGNET trainees pay $500 upon placement and another $1K if those employees persist for 90 days,” Latimer wrote. “Last year, employers paid $110K to hire 90 graduates from the program.”

(Social Finance is a nonprofit that designs and manages outcomes-based education and training pathways. It partners with Per Scholas to offer zero-interest loans to learners for their living expenses.)

Tom McGraw, director of sector partners at MAGNET, talked with me about how the WorkAdvance model works in Ohio. The program launched in 2020 and later received federal funding through the Biden administration’s Good Jobs Challenge. It’s managed by the Ohio Manufacturers’ Association.

“We’ve had a lot of local support,” says McGraw, including funding from local governments and philanthropies. “In the last six months, we’ve had more employer demand than ever before.”

The program recruits and screens participants. It runs nine cohorts a year, with each training track taking three weeks to complete. The program will graduate 150 workers into jobs this year, with small and midsize companies being the primary employers. Each participant gets access to a coach for a year after they complete.

The Good Jobs money dried up a while back. These days the program is supported by federal WIOA funds and by a state industry-recognized credential initiative, in addition to employer fees and foundation money.

The Kicker: “There’s still room to grow,” McGraw says. “We’re providing a really essential service to the people in the community and the companies.”

New AI Training Hub

Pursuit is an NYC-based nonprofit that trains lower-income people for good careers in technology, with a growing focus on AI skills.

This week Kathy Hochul, New York’s Democratic governor, announced that the state’s chief economic development agency will spend $3M on the creation of the AI Jobs Institute, a new training hub located in Long Island City that will be run by Pursuit. That money is part of a broader $10M public investment in the institute, which aims to train 40K New Yorkers by 2032. It also will seek to produce data and policy recommendations for state and federal AI workforce strategies.

“The AI Jobs Institute will bring together public leadership, industry expertise, and trusted community-rooted training so that New Yorkers can build the skills and careers this new economy demands,” Nick Simmons, Pursuit’s CEO, said in a statement.

Opinion

Open Tabs

Reskilling Grants
The U.S. Department of Labor announced $95.5M in grants for 20 projects that offer short-term training programs seeking to reskill and reemploy dislocated workers. The fund, announced in June, draws money from a WIOA reserve. It’s aimed at filling talent gaps in manufacturing, aerospace, energy production, and construction. Recipients included agencies in several states, as well as Per Scholas, which is slated to receive $2.7M, and Pursuit, which will receive $4.7M.

AI-Usage Gap
Three-quarters of U.S. adults with graduate degrees use generative AI at home or work, compared with 54% of adults with less than a bachelor’s degree, finds the GenAI Adoption Tracker from Harvard University’s Project on Workforce and the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. A similar usage gap exists between higher- and lower-wage earners, raising questions about what sort of training or workplace support can help ensure that AI’s benefits are shared more broadly.

AI and Jobs
Anthropic plans to commit 5% of its shares to a new public benefit fund, with an additional 2% added for every 50% increase in the company’s value above a set baseline. Anthropic cited labor market impacts as a potential focus for the fund, noting that the company previously committed $200M to studying and addressing the issue. It said the fund’s flexibility and scale will enable moves like making large donations to traditional nonprofits.

State Strategies
Academic achievement among K–12 students in the U.S. has been declining nationally since 2013, notes a report from the Center on Reinventing Public Education, a research organization at Arizona State University. Yet every state’s policy infrastructure to improve student outcomes has gaps, especially in math. Funders and advocates should hold states accountable for creating an improvement strategy and following through on it, recommends the report.

Employer-Friendly Practices
Partnerships between colleges and employers often deliver less than either side hopes, according to UpSkill America at the Aspen Institute. A new guide from the organization—which conducted interviews with dozens of employers—is designed to help colleges become more employer-friendly and to build the kind of institutional capacity that sustains and grows partnerships while also better serving working learners.

Career Guidance
CareerVillage will receive a $10M multiyear grant from NextLadder Ventures, a $1B fund backed by the Gates Foundation, the Ballmer Group, Stand Together, and other philanthropies. NextLadder is focused on using technology to increase economic mobility. CareerVillage is a nonprofit that seeks to support young jobseekers. It offers an AI-powered career coach that has been used by more than 150K people through 30+ institutional partners.

Action on Career Preparation
Career readiness is a top-tier priority among U.S. voters, finds a survey Morning Consult conducted on behalf of Jobs for the Future and Britebound. Large majorities of respondents called for action from elected officials in their state, with 84% saying they want help for young people to gain the education, skills, or work experience needed for a career. They also called for Congress to act, with 82% supporting labor market information and guidance.

Job Moves
Mordecai Brownlee has been hired as vice president for Denver metro engagement at Colorado State University and executive director of CSU Spur, a free, year-round educational, research and community destination. Brownlee has been president of the Community College of Aurora since 2021.

Jeremy Cowdrey has been hired as CEO of YouScience, an ed-tech company focused on college and career readiness. Cowdrey previously was CEO of Discovery Education. The outgoing CEO, Edson Barton, will stay with the company as founder and head of strategic partnerships.

I’m on a reporting and speaking swing for the next couple weeks, with stops in New York City; Fresno, California; Denver; Raleigh, North Carolina; and Branson, Missouri. I’ll be hard to reach, but the newsletter will continue. If this edition was forwarded to you, subscribe here. —PF