The writer is a research professor at the NYU Marron Institute and author of ‘Broke: Hardship and Resilience in a City of Broken Promises’
Donald Trump returned to office touting tariffs as a lifeline for American manufacturing. The Chips Act passed by Joe Biden promised investment in the semiconductor industry that would create more than a million construction jobs. Following the pandemic and rising geopolitical tensions, US companies are moving to increase domestic supply chains.
Yet the biggest stumbling block for any initiative that seeks to bring more jobs to America lies in something far more fundamental: lack of properly skilled workers. For years, US policy has failed to address the persistent and critical need for effective training.
Perhaps nowhere is this more apparent than West Virginia. I recently spent significant time conducting research in the southern coal counties, which have lived under the shadow of declining industry for decades. There I interviewed workers, educators, employers and policymakers about the challenges of reskilling adults for the jobs of the future, including the booming solar power sector.
Little more than half of all adults in West Virginia work or are seeking employment. It has the lowest labour force participation rate of any US state. Yet employers in the growing sectors of advanced manufacturing and clean energy described their struggles to fill available positions. “We have so many vacancies,” said the human resources director at one solar installation company.
The problem is not just the death of coal but the lack of training for jobs in other sectors. Local news reports say that at least a dozen major companies, from fuel-cell manufacturing to industrial solar, have announced their entry into the state over the past few years. State leaders claim projects could provide more than 10,000 local jobs if enough residents had the skills to access them.
Part of the problem rests at the national level. More investment in adult education is needed. The US front-loads spending in the early phases of life but after 25, public funding shrinks. Even Pell grants, the main programme underwriting post-secondary school education, extends only to full-time students. This renders it unavailable for targeted, short-term, mature learning. Plus, workers who already have bachelor degrees cannot access the grants.
Beyond Pell and programmes for military veterans, the US devotes only $16bn each year to worker training, according to non-profit Jobs for the Future. That figure used to be higher. As a percentage of GDP, it calculates that we now invest roughly one-fifth the average of other OECD member countries. Business workforce training has fallen by nearly 20 per cent in real terms over the past decade.
The upshot is that Americans lack the skills required to take up opportunities in the new millennium.
This is not for lack of interest on the part of workers. A 2021 Gallup-Amazon survey found that nearly 60 per cent of American workers would like to upgrade their skills to advance their careers. According to a Pew survey last year, about a third of college-educated adults also feel they need new skills to get ahead and would welcome opportunities for further learning.
West Virginia relies on an array of non-profit programmes to improve worker skills person by person. One woman I met in Barboursville was attending a free 12-week course for women interested in trades. Thanks to this pre-apprenticeship and mentoring programme, she is poised to become a project manager at a local solar company. In Huntington, the son of a coal miner is acquiring green construction skills via a programme that pays him to learn.
Everyone underscored the imperative for broader solutions. Robust partnerships between government agencies, educational institutions, workforce development organisations and individual industries could identify and then close sector-specific skills gaps. This would develop clear career progression paths for workers. However, recent House and Senate proposals to reauthorise the federal Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act suggest nothing like this and fail even to restore earlier investment.
West Virginia is a microcosm of a broader national issue: the urgent, unmet need for adult training. Without this, Trump’s tariffs and US manufacturers reshoring production will fail to transition personnel into the new economy before the starting bell rings. Millions of Americans will remain underemployed. The country risks a pyrrhic victory in creating jobs without creating the workers needed to fill them.
