Amid widespread anxiety that AI could wipe out jobs, Meta has announced America’s Workforce Academy — a $115 million training program for electricians, welders, plumbers and fiber technicians that guarantees each trainee a job upon graduation.
“People want to be part of this economic transformation but they don’t have a pathway,” Dina Powell McCormick, President and Vice Chairman at Meta, told The Post. “The future is for technicians. The future is for electricians. The future is for welders. We really believe the future is for everyone.”
AWA is not only free, it covers training costs, transportation and certification fees in addition to paying attendees so they can focus on learning without taking on side jobs. The program launches later this year with pilot locations in Louisiana, Ohio, Texas and Indiana, where Meta expects to train thousands of workers in the first year. While graduates are guaranteed placement at a Meta construction site, they can take a job elsewhere.
Mike Rowe, whose mikeroweWORKS Foundation has spent 18 years pushing private industry to close the skilled trades gap, said the need for highly-trained workers is critical for Americans to succeed in the artificial intelligence race against geopolitical adversaries like China.
“We are in the race of our lifetime,” Rowe told The Post. “It’s like a space race — we’re having a Sputnik moment, and that moment is the realization that it all comes down to workforce.”
Powell McCormick also noted the historical parallels between America’s past victories and today.
“In World War II, the country came together to physically build the arsenal that defeated tyranny in the world,” she said. “Today, these American workers are building the infrastructure that’s going to allow American AI leadership. And that’s critical right now.”
The scale of the need is staggering. Last month, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink projected $10 trillion would be required to create infrastructure necessary to fuel the AI boom.
Rowe notes that number is “worth repeating because it’s such an extraordinary number … we actually have the money, we actually have the will, and the people in charge understand the stakes. We need the workforce.”
AWA is partnering with the National Urban League, Associated Builders and Contractors and CBRE on the program and expects others may join in future.
“The reason it’s called America’s Workforce Academy is because it’s bigger than Meta,” Powell McCormick said. “We really hope we can expand this and work with other companies, other nonprofits. It’s very important that women are part of it.”
Meta launched a similar program, LevelUp, earlier this year that offered 1,000 technician training slots in Ohio — and received 35,000 applications in seven days.
Like AWA, that program paid students to learn, which Powell McCormick said has been a key part of its success.
“If you want to be an electrician, a plumber, a welder, a cyber technician, you have to get training. You have to get certified. You’re not sure at the end of that if you’re going to get a job,” Powell McCormick explained. “If you are an Uber driver, a grocery clerk, a waitress like I was during college — you’re living paycheck-to-paycheck and you can’t pay for [job] training.
”It made us realize the demand is enormous.”