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META'S AMERICAN WORKFORCE ACADEMY: WHAT IT MEANS FOR LOCAL TRADE SERVICES

Jul 23
2 min read

Meta and Mike Rowe recently announced an all-expenses paid trade training program that they say guarantees job placement upon completion called the American Workforce Academy, or AWA. The program is for any walk of life – high school or college graduates, career changers, veterans – you name it. It gives anyone a clear path into a handful of jobs that are in increasingly high demand: electricians, plumbers, fiber technicians and general construction professionals.

But could it be too good to be true?

For someone looking to enter the trades, probably not. This is your golden ticket. The guaranteed jobs are in the rapidly-expanding data center industry, but if you’re comfortable with large-scale industrial projects and cut out for long hours, you can earn a pretty incredible salary. For the contractors already struggling to hire skilled workers, there are some understandable mixed feelings.

We’ve personally lost some great guys to data center projects. It's tough as an employer when you've invested years helping someone build a career. Our homeowner customers and business construction partners feel it too. But it's also hard to fault someone for taking an opportunity that changes their family's financial future.

Our biggest bottleneck in the trades right now isn’t our workers getting poached between companies and projects. It’s finding the workers at all. For years we've all been asking how to get more young people interested in the trades. This may not be the answer any of us expected, but it could end up being part of the solution.

The data center boom won’t last forever – and the skills these students are learning are here to stay. Eventually those projects wrap up, and they'll take that experience with them to local electrical contractors, manufacturers, municipalities, and service companies.

One way or another, thousands of much-needed workers are finally coming into the trades. This is the shot in the arm we’ve needed for a long time now – one of the biggest recruiting opportunities our industry has seen in decades.

Even if we have to wait for the data center boom to slow down, we will be left with workers who are incredibly skilled. They’ll be more than capable of the tasks and projects we’re doing every day, and they’ll be ready for the pace and culture that we smaller companies can uniquely offer.

Beyond that, we’re excited about the sheer number of people who are now interested in the trades. The Meta and Mike Rowe combination is unmatched in terms of reach and influence in our world. It’s not just about the workers going through the AWA: it’s about the ones whose eyes have been opened to everything a trade career can offer.

Whether someone comes into the trades through the AWA, a local apprenticeship, or by simply walking into an electrical shop and asking for a chance, we're just glad more people are choosing this kind of work. Our industry has needed them for a long time.