Credential Lag

Preventing workforce bottlenecks for emerging tech industries and the AI infrastructure buildout. Also, 800+ applications for $60M aimed at helping women thrive in the workplace, and essays on bringing AI into workforce training and what career support gets wrong. (Subscribe here.)

Understanding Fast-Growing Industries

AI is the leading driver of business investment in the U.S. economy. The insatiable demand for data centers has led to a hiring boom, and not just for construction workers.

Construction has seen the biggest growth, with a 430% increase in core data center construction job postings since ChatGPT’s launch in 2022, finds new research from Revelio Labs. But the boom also is creating permanent data center jobs, with demand for both technician and IT and operations roles more than tripling.

These jobs require a unique set of industry-specific skills, writes Nate Lawrence, an economist at Revelio Labs. And access to effective workforce training is the key to ensuring lasting economic benefits from the AI boom.

“Many industry groups and companies offer certification programs in a number of different data center–related fields,” Lawrence writes. “Remarkably, many data center operators currently offer on-the-job training too, demonstrating just how motivated they may be to not just hire but do so quickly as well.”

One problem is that traditional government labor market data can’t keep up with emerging jobs in this fast-moving industry, as well for sectors like energy, critical minerals, and advanced manufacturing. Likewise, the U.S. credentialing system, which tends to move in multiyear cycles, generally hasn’t kept up with fast-growing industries.

As a result, up to 85% of companies in these spaces are struggling to hire the talent they need, says Matthew Evans, the CEO and co-founder of Julius Education.

“Traditional workforce approaches are too slow, generic, and backward-looking to address the rapidly changing, specific skills needed for these and other fast-moving sectors,” he says. “These sectors are invisible in traditional labor market data.”

The labor market intelligence platform from Julius seeks to help both industry and governments understand hidden workforce bottlenecks and opportunities. It tracks real-time job demand, skills, and career pathways.

State labor data systems are vital foundational infrastructure, Evans says. They’re the right tool for understanding the established economy, but not industries that evolve faster than Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) codes. State data lags 12 to 24 months and groups specialized roles under generic headings—like “software developer” for a role that’s actually an LLM operations engineer.

“When an industry body or community college tries to build a credential for one of these sectors, the underlying occupational data doesn’t exist—so credentials either get built on guesses or don’t get built at all,” says Evans.

For major AI infrastructure companies, Julius has built 500-role taxonomies for data center jobs that don’t exist in other industries. The firm also is working with the U.S. Department of Energy to build the occupational intelligence for the critical minerals industry, which Evans says couldn’t be found in labor market data 10 months ago.

At the state level, the company works with MassCEC, Massachusetts’ economic development agency focused on the clean energy industry. MassCEC deploys $20M annually across 80 local organizations. It taps Julius to make sure the money flows to programs that offer credentials aligned to demand by energy companies.

Community colleges are a key focus. The company helps two-year colleges align education and training programs with employer needs, particularly across AI infrastructure, energy, and advanced manufacturing.

For example, Good Jobs Western North Carolina is a recently unveiled industry coalition anchored by 11 community colleges that’s investing in workforce talent pipelines for high-demand sectors in Appalachia. An advanced manufacturing career map from Julius helps the coalition’s community college leaders with program design and career navigation for learners.

As Big Tech spends trillions on data centers and billions on workforce development, Evans says new credentials are needed for the jobs and skills required for that buildout. Julius seeks to identify labor bottlenecks before they become project delays, and to help develop apprenticeships, certificates, and microcredentials for data center roles that didn’t exist five years ago.

The Kicker: “These are credentials of the future, designed from real-time demand data rather than legacy occupational frameworks,” says Evans.

Shaping How AI Systems Are Built

The Workforce Innovation Now (WIN) Challenge is a $60M initiative led by Aspen Digital with support from Pivotal, a group of organizations founded by Melinda French Gates. It seeks to discover and develop innovative ideas to help women thrive and everyone win in a rapidly changing workplace.

More than 800 organizations applied to the challenge, which later this year will award either $2.5M or $5M each to up to 24 applicants. The awards will be grouped across three areas: culture and practices, AI, and narrative.

Most of the submissions were from existing organizations with a new idea or a proven solution ready to scale, Clare Bresnahan English, senior director of the WIN Challenge, writes on LinkedIn.

English tells me she was encouraged by the level of interest from apprenticeship providers and programs, including in healthcare and manufacturing. “The initial applicant data suggests organizations across sectors understand that there is momentum to rethink how training, employee engagement, and workplace innovation will create opportunities to ensure work actually works for everyone,” she says.

In the AI pillar, most applicants focused on limited access to AI training and tools, or low adoption rates of the technology. Some applicants are examining how to use AI to mitigate bias in hiring, or to help workers navigate benefits or access caregiving support more easily.

Despite all the uncertainty about how AI will play out across the economy, English says the applicants aren’t waiting to innovate.

“They also understand how important it is that women are part of shaping how AI systems are built and integrated into work,” she says. “The question isn’t just how to prepare workers for AI, but who gets left behind if we don’t get this right.”

Open Tabs

Workforce Priorities
Only about one-third of occupations targeted by the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act across states qualify as both in-demand and high-quality, according to new research from RAND. And just 38% of eligible training provider programs offer training exclusively for those occupations. Most states lack a clear, measurable definition of a credential of value, the report found. And many states overlook in-demand occupations in their workforce plans.

Tech Jobs
IBM’s new FutureNow Chicago delivery center at the Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park will create 750 new jobs in AI, cybersecurity, data science, and quantum. The company also has committed to hiring one-third of qualified graduates from a new apprenticeship offered by the City Colleges of Chicago. Philanthropies, including the Chicagoland Workforce Funders Alliance, and the state are supporting the apprenticeship program over the next five years.

Skilled Trades
GM has invested nearly $200M in the past year to grow and modernize skilled trades careers. The company last month placed 90 new skilled trades apprentices across its U.S. manufacturing footprint. The carmaker has committed $50M this year to STEAM education programs while growing workforce grants to $15M. For example, a new $1M grant to the Local Initiatives Support Corporation will expand hands-on training paired with career and financial coaching.

Short-Term Training
Break Through Tech’s experiential, project-based learning programs received high marks in an evaluation conducted by the Urban Institute. Employers highly rated their experiences with fellows from the nonprofit’s three-week Sprinternships and one-semester AI Studio and would recommend fellows for internships and permanent jobs. Fellows in both programs reported an increased sense of belonging in tech and confidence in their skills.

Bullish on Manufacturing
Jobs in manufacturing offer higher wages and stronger unionization than most private sector roles, while supporting four times as many jobs in communities and supply chains as do jobs created in other sectors, finds a report from the Roosevelt Institute. U.S. national and economic security strategy relies on and supports the domestic manufacturing base, the report says, and addressing climate change means moving toward primarily manufactured energy.

Trade Schools
Workforce shortages are crippling American businesses and threatening global competitiveness, Jason Altmire and Riley Burr at Career Education Colleges and Universities argue in a new book. At the same time, AI is driving labor market disruption while recent graduates struggle to find jobs and question the value of their college education. The book offers a roadmap for how trade schools can help to bridge the skills gap and solve workforce shortages.

Strategy Without Policy
Dual enrollment has become a critical blind spot in state policy, having radically expanded from local activity to statewide strategy without being intentionally designed or governed as one, finds a report from the National Alliance of Concurrent Enrollment Partnerships. Dual enrollment’s cross-system design requires states to move beyond expanding participation to clearly define quality and actively support, govern, and monitor its delivery.

Job Moves
Jen Mishory has been selected as the next president of the Institute for College Access & Success. Mishory previously was deputy under secretary at the U.S. Department of Education during the Biden administration, and most recently was senior advisor at America Achieves. Sameer Gadkaree stepped down as the president and CEO of TICAS at the end of 2025.

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