Companies are teaming up to prepare workers for data center jobs and other skilled trades roles. Some are backing community college programs, and AWS is at the forefront of that work. Also, new research on whether AI-powered tools can promote human networking, and an essay on why we should care about data on noncredit programs. (Subscribe here.)

Skilled Trade Solution From Corporate America?

Education and job-training systems in the U.S. have been unable to keep up with the rising demand for skilled workers, which the enormous AI infrastructure buildout is driving to new levels. Corporate America is trying to step into the breach, with a spate of pledges to fund and even manage training programs.

Meta, Google, BlackRock, Carhartt, Ford, Lowe’s, Nvidia, AT&T, Bank of America, Carrier, GM, Dewalt, and Duke Energy in recent weeks have collectively committed more than $1B toward training roughly 1.5M workers across the skilled trades.

The new attention and promises of funding generally have been welcomed by educators and workforce pros. But community college leaders have asked me how to get involved in the corporate training projects. Some observers also worry about a lack of coordination between the various efforts, with skeptics questioning whether the results will match the publicity.

Can Big Tech and other corporations get more Americans, especially graduating high schoolers, to pursue the trades?

“History and our past research say no for the most part unless you are in more non-college-educated parts of the country,” says Ron Hetrick, Lightcast’s principal economist. “Most parents, especially degreed ones, still see college as the only option for their children.”

Hetrick is more optimistic about the workforce projects making a difference in less-advantaged communities, which he says should be a focus for the companies.

The Lowe’s Foundation has made the biggest move so far, with a commitment to invest $250M to help train and develop 250K skilled tradespeople by 2035. This week the foundation joined seven major companies in rolling out a coordinated plan. The new Building Futures Skilled Trades Coalition includes two-year colleges, workforce organizations, and nonprofit training providers among its 75 members.

Changing perceptions of the skilled trades will be one of the three major pillars of the coalition’s work, along with scaling promising models and collectively measuring results, says Betsy Conway, executive director of the Lowe’s Foundation. The focus will be on shared programming and member engagement, while individual companies will still make their own investments. 

The idea grew out of Lowe’s experience investing in and forging partnerships with community colleges and nonprofits over the past four years. 

“We have seen tremendous results from the work that they do; it’s taken off much faster than we ever imagined,” Conway says. “And so that really inspired us to say, ‘We know that many solutions are living here at the ground level, but there’s no mechanism that exists today where our training providers, the grant recipients, and the broader network can really come together and share that information.’”

It was critical that other major corporations, along with smaller employers on the ground, be part of that work. “It’s really bigger than any one organization can tackle on its own,” says Conway.

Likewise, Google announced in July that it had partnered with BlackRock, Carhartt, and Ford to launch the Alliance for America’s Skilled Trades. The companies have made independent workforce training commitments across 30 states. Google previously pledged to help train more than 300K American workers for in-demand, high-paying careers across the skilled trades. 

AWS-Backed Pre-Apprenticeships: Amazon Web Services has been working on the talent gap for a long time. I first reported on the company’s tech-training programs in 2018. Those various projects grew and began extending into the skilled trades a few years ago.

The urgency has increased since then, with AWS announcing massive AI and computing infrastructure projects across the U.S. The company’s investments in Ohio alone are on track to reach $23B by 2030. Beyond directly employing thousands of construction workers, the AWS data center development is driving demand for skilled tradespeople across a complex network of suppliers.

“This is an existential challenge,” says Mike Berman, director of economic and workforce development at AWS. “It’s fundamental to this business.”

The company has ramped up its training programs, including free courses, workshops, and networking events with employers. For example, the AWS information infrastructure pre-apprenticeship (I2PA) is a paid, four-week program offered in partnership with YUPRO Placement, Year Up United, and Eleven Tenths.

Students at two-year colleges are the primary participants in the pre-apprenticeships, which pay $20 an hour.

“Community colleges are at the center of what we’re doing,” Berman says. “They’re anchor partners.”

The pre-apprenticeships are designed to offer a risk-free introduction to data center–related jobs. Participants get hands-on learning about the skills needed to build a data center, including how to work with HVAC, electrical, and fiber systems. They also see what it takes to run one, with training for operational roles like facility engineers, logistics coordinators, and maintenance technicians.

Berman says the goal for AWS is to help its community college and CTE school partners build capacity and meet employer demand in a sustained way. That includes aligning pre-apprenticeship training with fast-moving technology. The educators have the foundational and durable skills training down, says Berman. He estimates that help from AWS on the technical side accounts for 25% or less of the curriculum.

“Our model is to go into and work with the existing system,” Berman says.

In addition to paying pre-apprentices’ salaries and covering program costs—including wraparound supports—the company brings its suppliers and other employer partners to the training programs. These firms typically offer instructors and equipment. They also are invited to a career fair for completers on the last day of the program.

Berman says AWS is cool with graduates getting hired by companies outside of their direct network. Likewise, the company wants its college partners to draw from the pre-apprenticeship to create their own training programs. “A win is a win,” he says. “The rising tide lifts all boats.”

YUPRO Placement serves as the intermediary for the pre-apprenticeship. That means AWS doesn’t have to do the participant recruiting and screening, community colleges don’t need to act like a staffing company, and workforce nonprofits don’t have to be an employer of record, says Michelle Sims, YUPRO Placement’s CEO.

The organization provides employment administration, onboarding, and compliance. It also helps the pre-apprentices with interviewing and professional skills, so they can make the jump from training to employment.

“A national curriculum dropped into every community is less effective than a customized framework that matches local needs,” says Sims. “The AWS I2PA model allows employers to define the jobs and skills they need locally so colleges and training organizations can provide relevant instruction and workforce organizations can reach and prepare talent.”

Sims says the program has allowed YUPRO Placement to connect what community colleges do well with what employers need. She thinks it could be replicated by Meta, Google, and other data center developers that face workforce challenges, with lessons and skills training that apply to the nation’s broader skilled trades push.

The Kicker: “We don’t need hundreds of disconnected training programs that produce credentials and hope the labor market absorbs the graduates,” Sims says. “We need workforce ecosystems designed backward from actual jobs.”

(Elyse Ashburn contributed reporting for this article.)

New Research on the Credential Gap

The skilled trades are loosely defined. A report from Lightcast seeks to create a standardized definition for this category of work, which includes technicians, electricians, HVAC mechanics, construction workers, and carpenters.

The labor market data firm settled on 135 hands-on, in-person trade occupations that don’t call for a four-year degree. The jobs typically require an apprenticeship, a certificate, an associate degree, or other on-the-job training and experience. Less skilled general laborers were excluded from the pool of workers.

These 20M jobs are 9% of the U.S. workforce, Lightcast found. Construction and manufacturing roles comprise 60% of those jobs, with men filling 90% of roles in the skilled trades.

Employers currently are seeking to hire 2.1M workers annually across these jobs. Yet just 800K Americans complete an education or training program in the skilled trades each year, creating a talent gap of 1.3M workers.

Physically demanding work is part of why the skilled trades lose older workers to early retirement, the report notes. It’s also a key concern for Gen Z. 

Hetrick said the data center explosion has led to an increase in demand for hybrid technician roles that seek a mix of skills—like a familiarity with both electrical and precision cooling systems. Overall, data center growth has added 315K skilled trade jobs over the past five years. That number is certain to increase in the near future.

Springboard Occupations: Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce this week added to its body of research on credentials needed to fill middle-skills occupations, a category that includes but is not limited to the skilled trades.

The center’s new report identified springboard job roles. The 159 middle-skills occupations offer high starting pay and strong wage growth while requiring a certificate or an associate degree. These workers help power the economy, the report says, across job roles that include general and operations managers, electricians, computer support specialists, firefighters, and police officers. 

All 55 of the nation’s largest metro areas are projected to experience shortages of credentials aligned with springboard occupations through 2034, according to the research, which includes a data tool.

The gap will hit every springboard occupational group in 25 metro areas, including Atlanta, Detroit, and Seattle. Nashville has the biggest projected shortfall. Indianapolis is the best of those that fare better, with credential production falling short in six of 14 occupational groups that include springboard jobs.

Employers can be part of the solution, the report concludes, including by partnering with community colleges to offer work-based learning opportunities.

Disrupting Students’ Comfort Zones

Julia Freeland Fisher has spent much of her career researching the role networks play in who gets good jobs. The short answer: They matter a lot. And in the age of AI, who you know is likely to be no less important—and arguably even more so.

As AI-powered tools have proliferated, Freeland Fisher, the director of education research at the Christensen Institute, has become increasingly concerned that they may provide students and jobseekers with useful guidance, but at the expense of the kinds of human connections that are critical to launching and growing a career. In new research, Freeland Fisher and her colleague Anna Arsenault, an education-research consultant at the institute, decided to incentivize the people building AI-powered navigation tools to build in features that encouraged real-world connections—and to see whether it made a difference in what users actually did.

They created a small fund to support 10 platforms, including FutureFit AI, REACH Pathways, and Uprooted Academy, in developing and measuring functionalities designed to build users’ social connections and confidence. A central focus was on helping students overcome anxiety around networking.

“Can an AI coach help users overcome that stress and actually start turning to people?” Freeland Fisher writes in Work Shift. “Or, in an attempt to alleviate anxiety and fill in support gaps, will it ironically end up being a crutch that pulls people further toward technology and away from each other?”

Freeland Fisher and Arsenault’s research, out this week, doesn’t provide a definitive answer. But it does shed light on what ed-tech companies could do to move the needle in humans’ favor. The researchers share detailed results, broken out by specific platforms, in a new report, and Freeland Fisher shares her key takeaways in a piece this week on Work Shift. —By Elyse Ashburn

Issue Brief

The REal Deal

Open Tabs

Data Center Jobs
Unions and construction trade groups are warning that opposition to data center projects endangers thousands of jobs, Lindsay Ellis and Amrith Ramkumar report for The Wall Street Journal. In some cases unions are threatening to withhold support for politicians who oppose those projects. Meanwhile, Build American AI, an advocacy group tied to a pro-AI super PAC, is spending big on the AI data center fight, reports Maria Curi for Axios.

Trucking Schools
The Trump administration is shutting down more than 110 truck driver training schools. The schools were removed from the federal training provider registry due to certifying truck drivers who did not meet federal qualification standards, including English language proficiency requirements. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration also sent notices of proposed removals to 160+ other schools due to noncompliance. And the Department of Homeland Security this week conducted a synchronized surge across 200+ driving schools.

Apprenticeships
While substantially increased government funding for apprenticeship could accelerate employer participation, money alone will not create a modern U.S. apprenticeship system, writes Robert Lerman, a fellow at the Urban Institute. He calls for making registration faster and easier, and for moving toward common occupational standards for program approval. Government should also subsidize the classroom component of apprenticeship, Lerman writes.

College and Careers
High school career guidance skews heavily toward four-year college, found nationally representative survey panels of educators and students conducted by RAND. Two-thirds of high school students said they hear a lot of emphasis from educators about attending a four-year college. Students also often fail to follow through on plans for work-related learning, with 39% visiting an employer or workplace even though 71% said they planned to do so.

Job Moves
Aneesh Raman is the new chief economic opportunity officer at Microsoft. Raman, a former presidential speechwriter and CNN correspondent, moved over from LinkedIn, where he had also been chief economic opportunity officer, among other roles.

Jess Kostelnik has been hired as director of career pathways for Arnold Ventures. Kostelnik has been a senior policy adviser for higher education and workforce development to Colorado Governor Jared Polis, a Democrat, since 2023.

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