Training EV Technicians

Startup creates transferable training for EV technicians to close an education gap and boost sagging numbers of certified automotive technicians. Also, governors get creative to reshape workforce systems but are held back by federal rules, and Trump’s budget slashing hits nonprofit workforce training providers.

Credentials for a Growing Workforce

The U.S. market for electric vehicles has been bumpy of late, with cooling demand and partisan headwinds. Yet EV sales in this country still grew rapidly last year, and the industry is expected to drive substantial job growth across manufacturing and battery production, as well as for automotive technicians.

Yet the number of certified automotive technicians is headed in the wrong direction, with just 173K technicians holding a certification from the National Institute for Automotive Service Excellence, down 100K over the last decade.

Training for EV and advanced driver assistance systems is considered optional under the traditional certification system. And no licenses or specific training are required for most technicians who work in this segment of the industry. The institute offers a computer-based certification for hybrid and EV specialists, but fewer than 4K technicians hold that credential.

“There is a massive gap in education and training for the incumbent workforce as well as those in the traditional secondary and postsecondary pipeline,” says David Macholz, founder and CEO of the Advanced Vehicle Technology Education and Credentialing Coalition. “The competency of the workforce is not nearly where it needs to be.”

AVTECC is a startup that aims to expand and standardize training for technicians who work on EVs and advanced vehicle technologies, with a focus on preparing educators to teach these subjects. The nonprofit is piloting a skills-based certification program and seeking to accredit training providers across the U.S. and abroad.

“Accreditation will provide the schools a curricular framework and a scalable certification model that can be delivered during a course or program of study,” Macholz says.

The group has begun with certifications in the advanced technology space but plans to create more than 20 microcredentials spanning broad technological areas and skill levels. Those certifications and credentials will be stackable and transferable across the automotive industry.

“We plan to map out how our microcredentials connect and relate to the existing training frameworks within the industry,” says Macholz, “which will make granting credit for prior learning and articulation agreements much easier.”

The certification program is hands-on, with a skills-based approach that assesses what a student or technician can do on a pass-fail basis. 

“There is no margin for error when working on high-voltage systems,” says Macholz, who previously was assistant dean for transportation programs at New York’s Suffolk County Community College.

The Trump administration has paused or cut federal funding that has affected workforce development for automotive technicians. Many workforce grants are threatened, including those from the Federal Transit Administration, the U.S. Department of Energy, and the National Science Foundation. Macholz has written that the impact of those cuts could be massive.

The Kicker: “Who pays to train the transit technicians that now have fleets of electrified buses?” he says. “The major cities will likely have funding for this. However, the rural communities likely won’t.”

States Get Creative With WIOA (Where They Can)

Amid persistent labor shortages and changing economic demands, many governors across the country are reinventing their approach to workforce development. But they also still feel hemmed in by what they see as an overly restrictive federal system. 

To understand how that dynamic is playing out, researchers from Harvard University’s Project on Workforce and the National Governors Association talked to top advisors in 34 governors’ offices across the country, with an essentially even split between Democratic and Republican leadership.

“The future of workforce development depends on the ability of governors and other policymakers to adapt, innovate, and learn from each other,” the report’s authors write.

The report focuses on how governors are leveraging the authority they have under the federal Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) to expand access to employment and training. Almost 60% of governors’ advisors said low labor force participation was a major factor shaping their workforce development strategies—prompting states to move beyond traditional unemployment-focused programs. 

Alabama represents one innovative approach, the report says, with Gov. Kay Ivey establishing a statewide talent marketplace and an Office of Education and Workforce Transformation to coordinate previously siloed efforts. Arkansas has similarly reorganized and elevated workforce development. And Tennessee leverages flexible federal dollars through the Governor’s Reserve Fund to incentivize businesses like Ford and Nissan to hire and train individuals with significant barriers to employment.

The study identifies childcare (62%) as the most frequently cited barrier to workforce participation, followed by inadequate career navigation (53%) and transportation (35%). States like Illinois are responding by incorporating wraparound supports—including assistance with childcare, transportation, and housing—into many workforce programs.

“States understand that the challenge goes beyond training,” says Kerry McKittrick, co-director of the Project on Workforce. “They’re focused on wraparound services, but many are in the ideation phase.”

Some states also are transforming how they engage with employers. Michigan, for example, created a Talent Action Team, a “concierge-level service” that brings together local workforce agencies and community colleges to help businesses develop training and recruitment pipelines. The focus is on strategic industries, like electric vehicles, semiconductors, and tech more broadly.

Even as they get creative, though, state leaders remain frustrated both by low federal outlays and WIOA’s rigid eligibility rules and funding formula. The program, for example, restricts many funds to workers who are unemployed—making it hard to do the kind of upskilling and reskilling of incumbent workers that is a top priority in today’s environment.  

About half of the states reported using their Governor’s Reserve Funds—a flexible 15% carve-out under WIOA—to seed innovative programs. But almost two-thirds also have to use at least a portion of their flexible funds just to administer basic programs and backfill administrative costs.

“While WIOA provides governors with authority over key elements of the federally funded workforce system, it also poses constraints that have proven to inhibit innovation,” says Jack Porter, program director for workforce development and economic policy at NGA.

The researchers urge the federal government to address those concerns, especially as Congress considers the reauthorization of WIOA. An accompanying brief lays out a number of recommendations from the Project on Workforce, including prioritizing sectoral training, broadening eligibility criteria for youth and workers, and increasing funding for earn-and-learn programs like apprenticeships. And NGA also has outlined governors’ top priorities for federal policy around workforce. 

The Kicker: “Improving accountability and eligibility are both important,” McKittrick says. “But without significant investment, we won’t see real system transformation.”
—By Elyse Ashburn

‘An Unprecedented Amount of Uncertainty’

Up until the last few months, the job training program Jewish Vocational Service had been in “expansion mode.” Over the last several years, they’ve grown from their base in San Francisco to sites across California, training workers in healthcare, skilled trades, and tech. 

But with threats to federal funding for workforce training programs and a crackdown on DEI initiatives, JVS is pausing its growth. Leaders hope to maintain a flat budget and keep running the programs they’ve already started.

Lisa Countryman-Quiroz, the group’s CEO, says the changes at the federal level have brought “an unprecedented amount of uncertainty” to the organization’s funding. About 35% of JVS’s budget comes from public funding—some directly from the federal government and some from subgrants or federal dollars flowing through the states and counties.

“There’s quite a series of knock-on effects,” Countryman-Quiroz says. “It’s not simply a matter of specific grants or contracts that are under threat, although there is that as well. It’s brought a lot of fear and uncertainty to the whole nonprofit and workforce sector.”

Leaders of several workforce training programs spoke with Work Shift about how federal funding cuts are impacting the work they’re doing and the contingency plans they’re drafting in response. Some, like Merit America and Year Up United, do not receive federal funding and are relatively unaffected—while others like JVS and Project QUEST are feeling the effects.

Read the full story over at Work Shift. —By Colleen Connolly

Open Tabs

College ROI
The wage premium for workers with a bachelor’s degree peaked in 2000 at 100% of the noncollege wage and has since fallen about 10 percentage points, finds the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. The researchers posit that the decline is due to a big increase in earned bachelor’s degrees and because technological advances didn’t favor college-educated workers as much as previously thought. If trends continue, the wage premium could drop to 76% by 2042.

Expansion of Apprenticeship
Despite recent growth in federal and state funding for apprenticeships, annual expansion rates for these earn-and-learn programs have not reached pre-pandemic levels, Bhavani Arabandi and Leslee Haisma write for the Urban Institute. To advance apprenticeships, they recommend that states provide sustained and strategic investments, improve cross-agency collaboration, match funding to needs, and develop a state-level tool to navigate funding.

Job Vulnerability
AI agents are quickly improving how fast they can complete tasks. As a result, your job is as automatable as the smallest, fully self-contained tasks it features, writes Jason Hausenloy for Commonplace, a publication described as a home for the New Right. Roles requiring short tasks (10 to 20 minutes) that are stacked back to back are very vulnerable, including call center jobs, freelancer services, paralegals who draft contracts, and journalists rewriting articles.

AI and Labor Data
Traditional labor market data sources are too slow and limited to capture emerging shifts, Jobs for the Future says in a broad set of recommendations focused on AI. JFF calls for new, AI-powered approaches to understand skill demands, identify emerging roles, and provide actionable guidance to workers navigating transitions. The tech should be leveraged to proactively identify when a career path may be threatened, and to mitigate that risk by recommending upskilling and reskilling options.

Jobs in Property Management
YUPRO Placement has partnered with All Home, a Bay Area–based nonprofit, to prepare people in the region who have experience overcoming housing instability for jobs in high-demand property-management roles. Participants will be matched with employers for jobs in that industry after completing a tailored training program provided by JobTrain, an accredited nonprofit training institution also based in the Bay Area. They will receive support services during the training and employment.

Job Moves
John Ladd has joined Jobs for the Future as a senior advisor. Ladd worked at the U.S. Department of Labor’s Employment and Training Administration for more than 30 years, including 17 years as administrator of the Office of Apprenticeship.

Alison Lands has been hired as vice president of employer mobilization at Jobs for the Future. Lands previously was director of strategy and partnerships for SkyHive and regional head of skills transformation for Coursera.

Justin Singh has been appointed executive vice president and general manager of Cengage Work, which includes Milady, ed2go, Ready to Hire, and Infosec. Singh previously was chief transformation and strategy officer at McGraw Hill. 

Julie Margetta Morgan has been named president of the Century Foundation, a progressive think tank. Morgan was a senior official at the U.S. Department of Education during the Biden administration, and previously worked for the CFPB and Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

Thanks for reading. I’ll be at ASU+GSV next week. See you there! —PF