Pairing skilled workers with quality, high-paying jobs is one way to ensure Mississippi families succeed. However, limited access to skills training and low educational attainment keep many workers from securing good-paying skilled jobs. This gap between middle-skill positions and a comparably skilled workforce limits productivity for employers and access to jobs that support self-sufficiency for working families. Bridging the gap starts with investments in working families and skills training opportunities that are accessible for all Mississippians. This brief examines two enterprising programs tackling the intersections of persistent poverty, low educational attainment levels, and high unemployment rates, which threaten the economic security of Mississippians.
Georgia parents work hard every day to put food on the table and provide a brighter future for their children. Yet more than one in three of the state’s working families with children are likely to find themselves struggling to make ends meet due to low income.
In order to reach the state’s workforce and economic goals, Indiana needs leadership to better align resources for adult students and to remove barriers that stand between them and post-secondary education and training programs. The state has made progress in tailoring academic and training programs to workforce demands and made steps toward incentivizing those programs with financial aid. And yet, too many of the would-be students who need these programs most never take the first step because their path is blocked by non-academic barriers. Many more start but stop or drop out permanently before completing degrees and credentials that would benefit their families and Indiana’s economy.
Publication
- February 21, 2017
- COWS
- Rhandi Berth, Laura Dresser, and Emanuel Ubert.
Manufacturing in the Midwest continues to evolve. Firms increasingly rely on highly specialized and flexible processes, deploying new technology that redefines workers’ jobs and the skills needed for them. In Milwaukee, the Wisconsin Regional Training Partnership (WRTP)/BIG STEP has spearheaded the creation of a new registered apprenticeship in response to these dynamic forces. Industrial Manufacturing Technicians (IMT)are now working and being trained at firms across the upper Midwest. The success of this apprenticeship derives directly from the WRTP/BIG STEP’s long-standing and deep relationships with manufacturing firms and labor unions built over the course of two decades. The success also owes to the long tradition of apprenticeship in Wisconsin and the ways this project has built from the existing model. This paper offers the story of this apprenticeship innovation which is remaking apprenticeship for the new and rapidly evolving manufacturing sector.