Restore opportunity for all
Almost six years after the worst financial crisis in generations, our businesses have added nearly 10 million new jobs over the past 52 months. Manufacturers are hiring again; there’s more work available now than at any time since 2007. For the first time in more than a decade, business leaders around the world have declared that the No. 1 place to invest isn’t China. It’s the United States.
But opportunity for all means even as we’re creating more jobs, we have to make sure every American has the skills to fill them.
Not every job that’s a good job needs a four-year degree, but the ones that don’t need a college degree generally need some sort of specialized training. Recently, we took two big steps to make sure every American has the chance to learn skills that lead directly to jobs in growing industries like manufacturing, information technology, energy and health care.
In 2011, we asked Congress to reauthorize one of the most important job-training laws in our country, and its members worked through their differences and got the bill to the president’s desk. The law will give communities more certainty to invest in job-training programs and build on what we know works: more partnerships with employers, more tools to measure performance, and more flexibilities for states and cities to best run their workforce programs.
We also released a review of America’s training programs to ensure they have one mission: Train Americans with skills employers actually need, then match them to jobs that need to be filled. In Georgia, for example, the Atlanta BeltLine Healthcare Partnership is giving local workers a chance to learn skills that prepare them for a career in the health care industry
A lot of ideas in the report came from governors and mayors of both parties, business and industry leaders, community college presidents and labor unions. It’s a road map for investing in new strategies and innovations to help American workers keep pace with a rapidly changing economy. The report will also make sure we use existing investments and programs in a smarter way, and it will ensure transparency: Training programs that use federal money will be required to make public how many of their graduates find jobs, and how much they earn..
Both of these steps will connect more ready-to-work Americans with ready-to-be-filled jobs. They are a win for America’s workers, for the middle class, and for all those fighting to earn their way into the middle class.
We know that America is full of men and women who work hard and live up to their responsibilities. We’ve met them across the country: a working mother in Minnesota who retrained at a community college to go from waiting tables to a career as an accountant, and women in Detroit who knew little about computer programming four months ago, but who will soon become coders.
All they — and millions of other Americans — want is to see their hard work pay off, their responsibility rewarded. They want to work. They want to provide for themselves and their families. We’re fighting every day to give them that chance.
It’s what we need to do more of, together, as we restore opportunity for all.
Barack Obama is president of the United States; Joe Biden is vice president.
