President Obama Monday announced the launch of an initiative intended to provide Americans with the skills needed for well-paying jobs. The initiative, called TechHire, will provide access to training programs through universities and community colleges as well as nontraditional approaches like coding bootcamps and online courses.
Key elements of the initiative include:
- Twenty regions, with more than 120,000 open technology jobs and more than 300 employer partners in need of this workforce, are announcing plans to work together in new ways to recruit and place applicants based on their actual skills and to create more fast-track tech training opportunities.
- $100 million in new Federal investments to train and connect workers to good jobs in technology and other in-demand fields. The administration will launch a $100 million H-1B grant competition by the Department of Labor to support innovative approaches to training and successfully employing low-skill individuals with barriers to training and employment including those with child care responsibilities, people with disabilities, disconnected youth and limited English proficient workers among others. This grant competition will support the scaling up of evidence-based strategies such as accelerated learning, work-based learning and registered apprenticeships.
- Private sector boosts tools and resources to support and expand continued innovation in technology training, with a focus on reaching underserved populations. Private sector leaders are announcing commitments to provide free training through online training slots and expanding “coding bootcamps” — which provide intensive training for well-paying jobs, often in the course of just a few months — to low-income and underserved Americans including women, minorities and veterans. National organizations are committing to work with interested cities to share job and skills information, job-matching tools and other resources to help support the growth, adoption and creation of promising practices across the US.