All right, ladies and gentlemen, one thing America's had a problem with over the last several decades is matching up job skills with the available jobs. And right now we're in the midst of a national crisis, a shortage of folks to do some important jobs in general, but also to help build and run the giant new AI centers that we need. Just a reality. You may want to fight about where they should be and how big they should be, etc. And there's a big national debate about that. But for economic competitiveness, we need them. And there is a crisis because there aren't enough people who know how to do skilled labor to get them built and keep them running. So, I want to show you a video about a new program being announced today that is smartly aiming to actually not just complain about the problem and look at the negative statistics, but to do something about it. This is a new video, and then we'll have some guests to explain it to us.
People are building things in America again. Which calls for the best of America, our people. Introducing America's Workforce Academy, built by Meta. Paid training, a job, and a path to America's future. The future is for everyone.
All right, so joining us now to explain this new program, which aims to actually deal with the problem we face, are Dina Powell McCormick and Mike Rowe. Dina is the president of Meta, and partnering with Mike Rowe, of course, CEO of Mike Rowe Works Foundation and host on Discovery Channel of Dirty Jobs. And this program, America's Workforce Academy, is powered by Meta, built by Meta, is a new idea of solving an old and current problem. So, thank you both for joining us. Dina, just explain the dimensions of this. What's it intended to do? Who does it include, and how will it work?
Sure. Well, thank you so much for having us, Mark. It's an honor to be on Morning Meeting, and especially with Mike Rowe, who I've admired for a long time for raising these issues on a national scale. We're really proud today to be launching with a lot of partners America's Workforce Academy, which is a program that seeks to address the thousands and thousands and thousands of demand for electricians, welders, plumbers, pipe layers in our country today. But the problem is there's just a lot of barriers. And so this program provides paid training, it provides credentialing and licensing, and it provides a guaranteed job at a Meta site team right when you complete the program, or you can take the credential and go somewhere else. What we have figured out, Mark, is that there are a lot of Americans who would be interested in getting into these fields. The, you know, Uber driver, a grocery clerk, a waitress. I waitressed in college to pay for college. They would love to be part of these jobs. They just live paycheck to paycheck. They can't take the time off, pay for the expensive training, and then hope at the end they get the job. And I think that our view is that with a lot of, you know, what people are talking about today, nobody should be left behind, that the future is for everyone. But we actually have to create pathways, legitimate ways for people to be part of the future of the American economy.
Mike, we're so delighted and honored to partner with Meta and with you to explain to people what this is. You've been on the front lines of this issue for a long time. The skilled worker shortage is not new, but it's particularly important now because of the need to build and maintain all these new facilities. Why is one of the elements Dina highlighted, this question of getting people the opportunity to do this? A lot of people you meet want to get these skills. How does this bridge them from wanting to do it to actually being able to do it?
I think the first thing, Mark, is just to understand you can't paint with too broad a brush. There are a lot of different cohorts, there are a lot of different Americans who for a lot of different reasons haven't given the trades an honest look. Sometimes that's a result of stigmas and stereotypes, myths and misperceptions that have conspired to keep a whole generation of kids out of the trades. You can look at the removal of shop class from high school, I think, and draw a pretty straight line to a lot of unintended consequences, including $1.7 trillion in outstanding student debt, most of which is held by college grads and people who went to school but didn't graduate and aren't trained for any of the opportunities that currently exist. The skills gap is real. It was real when I started Mike Rowe Works 18 years ago, there were 2.5 million open jobs back then, even during a recession, interestingly. You know, every day the headlines were about the number of people who weren't working. It wasn't about the two or 2.5 million jobs that were open that employers were struggling to fill. Well, today that number is upwards of seven million. And we have this new sort of Manhattan-style project that's upon us. We're talking about a $10 trillion infrastructure buildout over the next eight or nine years. And the biggest impediment to making that happen is a trained and enthusiastic workforce. That was my message to Congress 12 years ago, the need to embrace some kind of national effort that involved the feds as well as big private companies to make a more persuasive case for the jobs that are there. That's what they're doing, and they've taken all the friction points away from the transaction. So, this is the first time in my career, anyway, I've seen so much opportunity with no impediments. So, it'll be fascinating to see A, how the needle moves broadly, and B, what other consequential companies are going to do in their own right to address the same problem.
If any of you have ever worked with people, whether young people, veterans, whoever it is, what they'll tell you is, I can't afford to get the training. I can't leave my job. I don't know how to get the training. I don't know what certificates are required to be eligible for these jobs, and I worry that if I do get certified, I won't have a job. Dina, your program is meant to solve all that, and you're doing it with a bunch of partners. Explain who the partners are and how they play a role in bridging all of this.
Sure. Well, you know, Mark, we actually learned where the demand was and what barriers we had to address when we started a program called Level Up. This was just focused on fiber technicians. We launched it just a few months ago. In four weeks, you get hands-on training. We pay for the travel costs. We pay for everything for you to come to the site. You graduate as a licensed fiber technician with a job on the other side of it. We had a thousand slots in the pilot. 35,000 people applied. It really did kind of big green light, and we went and talked to Mark and the leadership, and we said, "There is a disconnect. We have job openings. We can't fulfill the infrastructure needs that we have without amazing people to fill them, and there's demand." And so we called the Associated Builders and Contractors. We called the National Urban League. We called the Women in Trades, Hispanic Chamber, and frankly, a very important group that most people don't maybe know about, the National Council on Construction Education and Research. They are the entity that actually gives you the safety license, the license that makes you something called job site ready. You can get on a construction site. Obviously, you're going to need to pick a lane, electrician, welder, etc., and you're going to have to shadow and apprentice, but you're getting paid while you're doing that. So you've got that chance to do it. And once you have that credential from the National Council on Construction Education and Research, you have that for life. And we called it America's Workforce Academy so that other people could join us. You know, we would love nothing more than to continue to grow those partnerships, including with other companies. We'd be so thrilled if this program could scale. And I think Mike said something, you know, really important. During World War II, the country came together to physically build the arsenal that defeated tyranny in the world. And the way he talks about these workers has that same kind of heroism, in my opinion, because we're not going to win in the AI race. And it's pretty important for America to lead in this race for our economic and national security. We don't have a shot at winning if we don't actually employ this generation of American workers that are heroes to build the infrastructure that will help them compete.
All right, we got just about a minute left. Mike, talk to anyone listening to us, watching us, who thinks, why would this be for me? Why is this relevant to my life? Who should be thinking about this? Who's the kind of person who should go on the website, whose address we'll give in a second?
Well, look, again, I don't want to paint with too broad a brush, but it's very difficult to think of somebody who shouldn't. You know, there are a lot of people right now who are feeling uncertain because there's going to be a certain amount of disruption and displacement. Those people are looking at ways to retool and rethink and hit the reset button. And then there's a lot of kids coming out of high school who are truly baffled. They've been told the best path for the most people is the most expensive path. They need to be disabused of that notion. Mostly, though, in my experience, what they need to see is more than the existence of an opportunity. They need to hear from a real, live, living person who has prospered as a direct result of mastering a skill that's in demand and going to work. Happily, the evidence is voluminous. It's out there, and the evidence demands a verdict. And part of this program is going to involve, I think, me helping make a more persuasive case. Not to put you on the spot, but no, we... Let's go ahead and make a deal right now. No, look, the deal is, America, to answer your question, needs to see the folks who have already done this. And they need to be on billboards, they need to be in prime time, they need to be in ad campaigns. That's when the needle moves.
