Building the Builders

Why Home Depot is stepping into a void on talent pipeline development for the skilled trades. Also, big money for the shipbuilding workforce, and a look at what small businesses have to say about short-term credentials and skills-first hiring. (If this newsletter was forwarded to you, Subscribe here.)

Home Depot’s Boost for the Skilled Trades

The construction industry’s labor shortage is about to get worse. With a retirement wave looming, the skilled construction trades are projected to need to attract at least 400K new workers annually on top of normal hiring to keep pace with demand.

The Home Depot and its philanthropic arm are playing an active role in taking on this almost $11B estimated drag on the residential construction industry. Since creating its Path to Pro program in 2018, the Home Depot Foundation’s trades-focused partnerships have trained more than 60K participants and introduced roughly 500K people to the skilled trades.

“Our goal is to work with our nonprofit partners to give more people, particularly youth, separating military members, and underserved communities, a path to promising career options in the trades while also addressing the labor gap,” says Erin Izen, executive director of the foundation, who previously led workforce development for the company.

Worker shortages range from highly skilled plumbers and electricians to “job runners” on construction sites, who often don’t hold a credential. As a result, the Home Depot’s workforce programs start with generating interest among young people while also offering free online skills training for entry-level jobseekers.

“These people are not coming to work for the Home Depot,” Izen says. “It’s for the betterment of the industry.”

The company’s new partnership with the Boys & Girls Clubs of America is an example of its efforts on career exposure. As part of a broader $10M investment, the Home Depot Foundation recently launched two-year pilot programs across clubs in Atlanta, Houston, and Phoenix, which aim to introduce more than 1K children and teens to careers in carpentry, electrical, HVAC, and plumbing.

“Working with Boys & Girls Clubs of America will allow us to reach children where they’re at,” says Izen, and “equip them at a critical age with hands-on technical skills, mentorship, and educational programs that provide alternatives to the ‘traditional’ college route for those who wish to pursue a future career in the trades.”

The foundation’s new investments also will expand programming with existing partners. The Home Builders Institute, for example, will tap the funds to offer its pre-apprenticeship certification to almost 2K more high school students across 25 additional schools while also maintaining its military programs on 10 bases.

Perhaps more unusual than the Home Depot’s support for career exploration and training programs is its hands-on approach to helping jobseekers by creating a site that looks like a LinkedIn for the skilled trades.

Many qualified tradesworkers are actively job searching, says Izen, while 94% of construction firms report having a hard time finding workers to hire. So the Home Depot created a free jobs marketplace to connect employers and jobseekers.

The Kicker: “The Path to Pro Network now has more than 125K candidates seeking employment in the skilled trades, ultimately helping businesses grow by providing them with the skilled labor they need,” Izen says.

‘Work-Ready Credential.’ What’s That Mean?

As states and now the feds put more money behind short-term credentials, a looming question is whether employers put stock in them.

Jeran Culina and Amanda Bergson-Shilcock decided to ask. Over a couple months this spring, the two leaders at the National Skills Coalition interviewed 75 small and midsize manufacturing and construction companies about skills-first hiring and how they use nondegree credentials in hiring and promotion. Most companies had between 200 and 600 employees, and they were eager to talk.

“Small businesses face the same challenge as any business—finding skilled workers that match their hiring needs—but their specific voices and needs aren’t often heard,” Bergson-Shilcock, senior fellow at NSC, and Culina, senior manager of the group’s Business Leaders United, told us in a joint response to questions.

Many businesses do some version of skills-first hiring, but they didn’t call it that. 

Small businesses also found the sheer number and variety of nondegree credentials confusing—and very few said they consider them in entry-level hiring. When it came to hiring for technical roles on the next rung up, however, companies were far more familiar with specific credentials and took them into account for both new hires and promotions.

• The key distinction: Employers didn’t know much about general work-readiness credentials, such as WorkKeys or soft skill certifications. But they knew and trusted many industry-specific credentials, such as certifications for milling and lathe, avionics, or diesel tech.

This bears out in students’ experiences. Researchers at Education Equity Solutions, for example, recently found that while many colleges view short-term credentials as a “foot in the door” in fields like manufacturing, students want them to immediately open the door to a family-sustaining job. Certificates pegged to slightly more advanced technical roles were much more likely to deliver that.

“Businesses told us over and over again that they value clarity,” Culina and Bergson-Shilcock say. “And, of course, workers want the confidence of knowing that the credential they’re earning will have value in the labor market—that employers will care if they see it on their résumé.”

The BLU report recommends policymakers invest in technical assistance that helps businesses make sense of short-term credentials and also scale industry-wide partnerships that make it easier for small employers to connect with colleges and other quality training providers.

“Sometimes the CEO him or herself is doing the hiring,” the researchers say. “Small businesses are hiring a smaller volume of workers compared to their larger peers, so they can’t easily get a training provider to create a class just for them. And they have less time and staff available to sit on workforce boards or otherwise help shape the education and workforce system.”

In that vein, small businesses wanted easier ways to access state and federal dollars for workforce development and more government spending on training, particularly for upskilling incumbent workers. Much of what small employers were concerned about, though, had nothing to do with skills and everything to do with their workers’ day-to-day challenges around childcare, transportation, or even affording appropriate clothes. 

The Kicker: “They viewed employees as people who weren’t just employees but people who had lives outside of work,” the researchers say. —By Elyse Ashburn

Shipbuilding’s Potential Jobs Boom

The U.S. shipbuilding industry appears to be on the verge of receiving a huge infusion of money, including increased spending by the Pentagon, private investment, and a potentially astronomical contribution from South Korea.

The Trump administration’s trade negotiations with South Korea are complex and remain extremely fluid. But under the terms of an initial tariff deal, the nation’s leaders pledged that its firms will spend $150B to “make American shipbuilding great again.”

Some of that money would be earmarked for workforce development. And even a small share of an investment that large would go a long way for a country that spends just $1B annually on job training through the primary federal workforce system.

China’s shipbuilding surge, which has included subsidies approaching $100B, has led to an industrial challenge the U.S. can’t solve on its own, Jeffrey Voth, president of Herren Associates, an engineering and tech firm, writes for Breaking Defense. He says the South Korean investment would be a turning point.

“If Washington can clear workforce and legal obstacles that stand in the way of progress,” Voth writes, “this infusion could provide the industrial foundation needed to meet China’s scale with allied strength.”

For example, the White House last week touted a $5B infrastructure plan by South Korean–owned Hanwa to grow the workforce at the Philly Shipyard while increasing its production 10-fold. The company hired 600 new workers after buying the shipyard last year, Mallory Shelbourne reports for USNI News. It plans to hire 120 apprentices this year, doubling that number in 2027.

Shipbuilders have been strong advocates for apprenticeship, Jeran Culina, of the National Skills Coalition, told us in a separate interview. Yet she says federal contracts in the industry tend to include stringent requirements for workers to have years of experience, which apprentices obviously lack, limiting how often work-based learning can be used. Likewise, wage rules for federal contracts can be a problem for bringing entry-level workers into the industry.

The BlueForge Alliance is an interesting player to watch on workforce development for shipbuilding. (You saw the group’s buildsubmarines.com logo behind home plate if you watched the World Series.)

The nonprofit seeks to align government, industry, and education to strengthen the defense-industrial base. Through its partnership with the U.S. Navy, the alliance helps community colleges develop training programs for naval shipbuilding.

For example, a Navy-funded alliance investment of $15.4M backed the creation last year of a free, 17-week maritime manufacturing program at Michigan’s Macomb Community College. Students learn to build parts for submarines and ships in the new program.

“Our partnership with the Navy provides residents with the opportunity to complete free training that will qualify them for rewarding, well-paying and in-demand jobs right here in metro Detroit,” Jim Sawyer, president of the college, said in a statement.

Open Tabs

AI and Jobs
A bipartisan proposal in the U.S. Senate would require major companies and federal agencies to report AI-related job loss to the U.S. Department of Labor each quarter. The bill announced this week by Senator Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican, and Senator Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat, would cover both AI-related layoffs and job displacement. The Labor Department would compile the data and release it to both Congress and the public.

Skills Training
Amazon is committing $2.5B to expand access to education and skills training and to help prepare 50M+ people for the future of work. The company is extending its Career Choice program to all salaried U.S. employees, saying more than 250K workers globally have participated in the program, including 100K during the past year. Citing the rapidly changing economy, Amazon says the skills push is aimed at the general public as well as employees.

Pharma Manufacturing
Private industry will invest up to $120M toward the development of the Virginia Center for Advanced Pharmaceutical Manufacturing. Partners of the new center include AstraZeneca, Eli Lilly, and Merck. The Virginia Community College System and several Virginia-based universities are part of the collaboration. The center will offer industry-led workforce training and education, with a goal of graduating up to 2,500 students per year.

Upstart Accreditors
The Trump administration remains interested in reforming accreditation in higher education, reports Liam Knox for Bloomberg. Nicholas Kent, the U.S. under secretary of education, called for a “reset of the whole system” and for accreditors to police college campuses on DEI programs. The administration also wants to encourage more accrediting agencies, influencing traditional accreditors and potentially funneling funds to trade schools and certificate programs.

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