Speaker 1: We create a battery belt spetchy from Michigan to Georgia.
Speaker 2: In Chester County, South Carolina.
Speaker 3: We've all heard about the Biden administration's push to bring
Speaker 3: back American manufacturing and create jobs, especially in technology like microchips,
Speaker 3: renewable energy, and of course electric vehicles. The hundreds of
Speaker 3: billions of dollars that will flow into those industries over
Speaker 3: the next few years are accelerating the growth of what's
Speaker 3: now being called the battery belt. Across the southeastern US.
Speaker 3: Echoes there to the Midwestern rust Belt, the old center
Speaker 3: of steel production and other heavy industry in the last
Speaker 3: centri Next there's the Sun Belt, the russ Belt, now
Speaker 3: the battery Belt.
Speaker 1: The hope to turn the Roust Belt into a Pan
Speaker 1: American battery belt before the next election.
Speaker 3: So how will all this money be spent? To find out,
Speaker 3: Bloomberg's Mackenzie Hawkins and Reed Pickert took a close look
Speaker 3: at Tennessee. It's a state that's trying hard to attract companies.
Speaker 3: And here's the hard part. Quickly find and train thousands
Speaker 3: of workers to fill these positions, some requiring all new skills.
Speaker 4: They told me that they put out a coloring book
Speaker 4: about the trades and are trying to push that in
Speaker 4: elementary school libraries.
Speaker 1: They have people flooding into the state, and employers will
Speaker 1: follow where those people are.
Speaker 3: And we'll hear from workers who are going back to
Speaker 3: school to future proof their careers.
Speaker 2: I wanted to know the ins and outs. I wanted
Speaker 2: to learn how to repair or design at a given
Speaker 2: point maybe, and I didn't think that that was going
Speaker 2: to actually be possible at my age.
Speaker 3: I'm west Kosova today on the big take, how the
Speaker 3: battery belt is being built? Mackenzie, I think we're all
Speaker 3: familiar with the Rust Belt, which was the manufacturing belt
Speaker 3: of America for many decades. Why is the battery belt
Speaker 3: in the South.
Speaker 4: I mean, you're generally seeing a sort of migration of
Speaker 4: the US economy towards the southeast. A lot of wealth
Speaker 4: is moving there, a lot of people are moving there.
Speaker 4: So it's not entirely surprising that we're seeing a concentration
Speaker 4: in additional to the traditional industrial Midwest, also in states
Speaker 4: like Kentucky and Tennessee and Georgia. And there are of
Speaker 4: course a lot of factors at play. You know, One
Speaker 4: is you want already supply of people. Two is factories
Speaker 4: need Land, and so you're not going to see them
Speaker 4: popping up in urban cores like New York or DC
Speaker 4: or San Francisco. Some folks have also pointed to the
Speaker 4: South having you know, right to work states, so car
Speaker 4: manufacturers that don't necessarily want to deal with labor union
Speaker 4: negotiations that will be more present in parts of the Midwest.
Speaker 4: And it's important to note that you're also seeing you know,
Speaker 4: battery investment happening in our parts of the country like
Speaker 4: Texas and Nevada.
Speaker 1: Something that Tennessee has done really well for a long
Speaker 1: time now is trying to think about their future workforce.
Speaker 1: And so when thinking about their future workforce, you know,
Speaker 1: back in the mid twenty tens, they thought, okay, so
Speaker 1: what is the best way that we can prepare our
Speaker 1: workforce at the future by educating them in the skills
Speaker 1: that we think they'll need. And so they announced something
Speaker 1: known as Tennessee Promise, which allowed for new high school
Speaker 1: graduates to go to community college or technical school for free.
Speaker 1: Around the same time, that was expanded to also include
Speaker 1: adults of all ages as well, so virtually every adult
Speaker 1: in the state could get this free technical education. The
Speaker 1: true kind of first example of this partnership between the
Speaker 1: technical schools or the Tennessee College of Applied Technology and
Speaker 1: companies was with this Nissan facility right outside of Nashville.
Speaker 3: McKenzie, You went down to Tennessee and you talk to
Speaker 3: a lot of people both who run teacat this school
Speaker 3: and the students, and what did they tell you?
Speaker 4: So this TEACAT campus in Smyrna, which is, you know,
Speaker 4: about half an hour outside of Nashville, is a really
Speaker 4: interesting example within a broader two dozen campus system because
Speaker 4: it's an offshoot of an existing teacat that Nissan actually
Speaker 4: helped fund itself to provide a specific pipeline of workers
Speaker 4: to the plant and also to bring in a lot
Speaker 4: of tech and tools and machinery to allow students to
Speaker 4: learn trades like welding, trades like industrial electrical maintenance, machine
Speaker 4: tool technology. And so you have a bunch of students,
Speaker 4: some of whom are current Nissan employees, some of whom
Speaker 4: are on track to become Nissan employees, and a lot
Speaker 4: of whom are just sort of traditional TEACAT students learning
Speaker 4: the trades using pretty high tech, twenty first century technology.
Speaker 4: But getting that message out there is probably the biggest
Speaker 4: struggle for Nissan and for college administrators, because that's not
Speaker 4: what you think of when you think of a factory,
Speaker 4: and what they're trying to promote is that this is
Speaker 4: a clean, high tech and twenty first century career.
Speaker 3: And read that's a really important thing, I think, because
Speaker 3: one of the things that stood out to me in
Speaker 3: your story is just how few Americans these days are
Speaker 3: in manufacturing positions.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, Manufacturing has gone from about sixteen percent of the
Speaker 1: workforce at the start of the nineteen nineties to just
Speaker 1: eight percent now. And so you know, part of the
Speaker 1: struggle in terms of trying to convince young people to
Speaker 1: take these jobs and invest in their education for this
Speaker 1: type of jobs is when you look around and you
Speaker 1: see other adults in your life, you see the case
Speaker 1: that these jobs have been shrinking for decades. So encouraging
Speaker 1: people to invest in this and promising that these jobs
Speaker 1: are now going to be increasing in the future and
Speaker 1: that there is need there can be quite difficult.
Speaker 3: And mc kenzie. Another thing you write is that that's
Speaker 3: especially true for younger people who are kind of raised
Speaker 3: digitally and now they're trying to be persuaded to work
Speaker 3: with their hands definitely.
Speaker 4: I mean, one of the kind of consistent themes, particularly
Speaker 4: in the younger students that I talk to on the
Speaker 4: ground in Tennessee, is they're not being encouraged to pursue
Speaker 4: the trades. The message that's been you know, in some
Speaker 4: cases kind of forced down the typical middle school or
Speaker 4: in high schooler's throat is the pathway to success in
Speaker 4: America is a four year university degree, and if not
Speaker 4: that community college. And now, when you have a pretty
Speaker 4: robust labor market and you can make a decent living
Speaker 4: wage in some parts of Tennessee, and you know parts
Speaker 4: across the US working a sort of traditional service industry job,
Speaker 4: the idea of industrial education to pursue a career path
Speaker 4: that's been on decline in America for decades is not
Speaker 4: particularly appealing. And so the eighteen and nineteen year olds
Speaker 4: who have made their way to teacot are often doing
Speaker 4: so after being pushed by their parents, or by their
Speaker 4: guidance counselors, or by their teachers or by their friends
Speaker 4: to what's been sort of presented as the dogma for success.
Speaker 3: Read you said earlier, how Tennessee's been at this for
Speaker 3: quite a while, but now they're really making a new
Speaker 3: push to bring even more jobs into the state to
Speaker 3: create the kind of manufacturing base that McKenzie's talking about.
Speaker 4: I think that.
Speaker 1: You've seen Tennessee attract a lot of jobs across the board,
Speaker 1: and so I think it's really benefited from this kind
Speaker 1: of boom of the South, and Nashville in particular has
Speaker 1: really been this boom town that when economists look at
Speaker 1: cities that things are going well for, Nashville is often
Speaker 1: one that they point to because you have seen this
Speaker 1: influx of tech jobs, this influx of finance jobs, and
Speaker 1: really this diversification of the economy. And I think what
Speaker 1: this really speaks to is the fact that, like a
Speaker 1: lot of states in the United States, Tennessee saw more
Speaker 1: deaths than verse in twenty twenty two, and that could
Speaker 1: be a real problem for the state in terms of
Speaker 1: thinking about growing its workforce, in terms of growing industry.
Speaker 1: But what they do have is they have people flooding
Speaker 1: into the state. So because of the jobs that are there,
Speaker 1: because of the relative affordability and the good weather. I'm
Speaker 1: from Tennessee myself. They instead had, you know, a net
Speaker 1: around eighty one thousand people pour in from other states
Speaker 1: into Tennessee and employers will follow where those people are.
Speaker 1: And while the state is certainly welcoming all of these
Speaker 1: new people with open arms, you know, officials did emphasize
Speaker 1: that the priority is to make sure that Tennesseeans are
Speaker 1: getting these types of jobs. And then from the perspective
Speaker 1: of manufacturers, you know, the state has a lot to offer,
Speaker 1: and especially when the state can offer you these pretty
Speaker 1: substantial incentive packages and are offering and putting on the table,
Speaker 1: will build a teacat on your property to drain your
Speaker 1: people for you.
Speaker 4: Tennessee's been in the subsidy game for a while. I
Speaker 4: mean the breaks that they gave tax breaks, land use breaks,
Speaker 4: you know, water subsidies, and of course an actual technical
Speaker 4: college for this Ford plant that's opening outside of Memphis
Speaker 4: total around two point four billion dollars. And this is
Speaker 4: not just happening in Ford. Of course. Teacat is a
Speaker 4: form of subsidy for any employer and parts supplier that's
Speaker 4: interested in moving to the state and wants a ready
Speaker 4: supply of trained workers. And Tennessee is primed to pour
Speaker 4: nearly a billion dollars into the TACAS system writ large
Speaker 4: to update existing campuses open new campuses and make it
Speaker 4: possible for any sort of industry expert, any employer to
Speaker 4: turn to their local teacat and say, hey, I need
Speaker 4: to train X number of people with X specific skills.
Speaker 4: Can you turn that around for me? And when I
Speaker 4: talked to this person who's their title is the special
Speaker 4: Industry Coordinator at the teacat in Murphy's Borough, that person's
Speaker 4: entire job is being the point of contact for local
Speaker 4: industry and he says he's worked with upwards of one
Speaker 4: hundred companies over the past couple of years just in
Speaker 4: that area. I'm right outside of Nashville. And if a
Speaker 4: company says, hey, I need X number of workers trained
Speaker 4: in a couple of weeks, they can start that training
Speaker 4: program tomorrow because they're in many cases adding a couple
Speaker 4: of skills here, or they are fine tuning it to
Speaker 4: the specific company needs. And that, of course, is a
Speaker 4: legitimate form of subsidy that the state is trying to
Speaker 4: use to draw more employers in during this sort of
Speaker 4: national manufacturing push where every state is competing to get
Speaker 4: a piece of the pie.
Speaker 1: I mean, it is pretty revolutionary to offer free technical
Speaker 1: education for nearly every adult in your state. And I
Speaker 1: think Tennessee was very much at the forefront of this.
Speaker 1: But one thing that I find really interesting is when
Speaker 1: I originally did a story on this topic. More generally,
Speaker 1: it was during the time of the Democratic primaries, where
Speaker 1: several of the can we're talking about these potentials for
Speaker 1: free college initiatives and free community college, and they were
Speaker 1: all being talked about by Democrats. And here's Tennessee, that's
Speaker 1: a deeply read state with a program that is very
Speaker 1: popular across the.
Speaker 3: State, government funded.
Speaker 1: Government funded, Republicans supported. A Republican governor is the one
Speaker 1: who came up with this idea and pushed it all
Speaker 1: the way through. And I think it also really shows
Speaker 1: you that people can get on board with these things
Speaker 1: that are really helping to build up the middle class
Speaker 1: and provide an opportunity in a path to these kinds
Speaker 1: of jobs.
Speaker 3: Mcken's we've been talking a lot about state investments and
Speaker 3: investments from companies, but there's also a ton of federal
Speaker 3: money from the Biden administration going into this.
Speaker 4: So you're seeing hundreds of billions of dollars in federal investment,
Speaker 4: not just going to subsidize the electric vehicle and battery industry,
Speaker 4: but also clean energy, semiconductor ships, and traditional hard infrastructure,
Speaker 4: and that's being matched by an explosion of private capital
Speaker 4: going into these states and the electric car industry. You're
Speaker 4: seeing over one hundred billion dollars in recent years. Tennessee
Speaker 4: itself has garnered more than sixteen billion dollars since twenty
Speaker 4: seventeen in electric vehicle investments. You're starting to see the
Speaker 4: beginnings now of federal money flowing into states that are
Speaker 4: very quickly trying to leap up and get carveouts for
Speaker 4: major projects, and that's one of the things that is
Speaker 4: causing and generating this battery belt. So you know, Tennessee
Speaker 4: was in on this game a while before. You saw
Speaker 4: the Inflation Reduction Act provide massive substies to the electric
Speaker 4: vehicle industry. But there's no doubt that the federal investment
Speaker 4: and incentives are going to dramatically ramp up this trend.
Speaker 4: And it'll be really interesting to watch where in the
Speaker 4: US this money is concentrated. Of course, in the case
Speaker 4: of evs and batteries, we're seeing a concentration from Michigan
Speaker 4: to Georgia, including both the sort of traditional industrial Midwest
Speaker 4: and also in it explosion of ev and battery industry
Speaker 4: in the southeast, of course, somewhat ironically, because these are
Speaker 4: states that you not necessarily would expect to be latching
Speaker 4: onto sort of a green energy future going through a
Speaker 4: very red part of the US.
Speaker 3: After the break, we hear from people who are taking
Speaker 3: advantage of these new training programs. McKenzie. So we've now
Speaker 3: heard how they've created all these jobs. How are the
Speaker 3: companies finding all these people they need to fill them.
Speaker 4: I had a conversation with a Nissan executive in charge
Speaker 4: of workforce development, and he said, if we were going
Speaker 4: to high schools before we're going to middle schools now.
Speaker 4: I mean, the general thesis is the pipeline just needs
Speaker 4: to be starting earlier and earlier and earlier. Sat By
Speaker 4: the time they get to high school and they have
Speaker 4: the classroom visits that these companies have been doing for
Speaker 4: a while, that isn't the first time they're being introduced
Speaker 4: to the idea of the trades as a viable career path.
Speaker 4: So you're seeing a doubling down on the classroom visit strategy.
Speaker 4: But you're also seeing some innovation from folks at the
Speaker 4: Tennessee Board of Regents, which is the kind of body
Speaker 4: that oversees public higher education in the States. They told
Speaker 4: me that they put out a coloring book about teacat
Speaker 4: and about the trades and are trying to push that
Speaker 4: in elementary school libraries. They have a bus that they're
Speaker 4: driving around to middle school science fairs where kids can
Speaker 4: come try out augmented reality welding and you know, try
Speaker 4: to troubleshoot a hydraulic power switchboard. Things that I mean,
Speaker 4: words that don't even mean anything to kids in a
Speaker 4: lot of places who have been learning about coding and
Speaker 4: you're hearing about Python and Java, you're not hearing about
Speaker 4: stick welding. And they're trying to sort of change that
Speaker 4: paradigm through marketing strategies that are engaged in a really
Speaker 4: uphill battle.
Speaker 1: Another great example is what Volkswagen has been doing in
Speaker 1: this date. And they're in Chattanooga, which is in the
Speaker 1: far east part of the state, and they have essentially
Speaker 1: kind of taken this multi prong approach to trying to
Speaker 1: get kids in the area excited about manufacturing. They've put
Speaker 1: digital fabrication studios in K through twelve schools so that
Speaker 1: kids can learn hands on types of manufacturing things high
Speaker 1: school juniors and seniors can actually take classes at the
Speaker 1: Volkswagen plant at their Megatronics academy. The county schools have
Speaker 1: gotten totally on board with this manufacturing initiative, and then
Speaker 1: that even carries on past that with Volkswagen has then
Speaker 1: partnered with a local community college to do apprentice at
Speaker 1: ships and really blends that classroom and hands on experience.
Speaker 1: You know, as someone who grew up going to Tennessee
Speaker 1: public schools myself, I never heard anything about these high
Speaker 1: tech manufacturing careers and so the idea that they're starting
Speaker 1: children so young and showing these paths is something that's
Speaker 1: really new and different.
Speaker 3: McKenzie. We were talking a lot about trying to persuade
Speaker 3: young people, but you spoke to a lot of people
Speaker 3: in Tennessee who are going through these schools through the
Speaker 3: teacat program, and they're really diverse group of people, and
Speaker 3: not all of them are.
Speaker 4: Young, definitely. So the average age of the campus that
Speaker 4: I visited is twenty six, and administrators are trying to
Speaker 4: bring that age down because they're really focused on the
Speaker 4: future pipeline for these jobs and they're seeing some success statewide,
Speaker 4: you know, whereas broader adult enrollment in the TEACAS system
Speaker 4: has flatlined over the past five or so years. High
Speaker 4: school dual enrollment has nearly tripled since twenty sixteen, and
Speaker 4: so they are really targeting those younger folks, but you
Speaker 4: are also seeing a large share of students who are
Speaker 4: older adults, perhaps pursuing higher education for the first time,
Speaker 4: in some cases coming back after getting a bachelor's degree
Speaker 4: that they haven't found especially useful in aligning with their
Speaker 4: career ambitions, or they're sort of looking at the local
Speaker 4: job market and saying, this is where the jobs are,
Speaker 4: I should probably get certified in a way that's relevant
Speaker 4: to these jobs. Just as kind of an example of
Speaker 4: the diversity that we see in the types of students
Speaker 4: that are enrolling. I talked to a young woman named
Speaker 4: yeralin res Garcia. She learned about the TEACT through her
Speaker 4: brother in law, and that's kind of a common theme
Speaker 4: that I heard among the young people that I spoke to,
Speaker 4: that they weren't hearing about teacat through their high school
Speaker 4: guidance counselors or the teachers who will have them sit
Speaker 4: in class and throughout a college application, but rather through
Speaker 4: word of mouth, which of course is a great marketing tactic,
Speaker 4: but you can't build an entire industrial workforce just via.
Speaker 1: Word of mouth.
Speaker 4: But also sort of highlighted the challenges in pursuing a
Speaker 4: Teacot education even when you have basically a tuition free
Speaker 4: ride towards a certificate via Tennessee Promise and Tennessee Reconnect.
Speaker 4: She works in a daycare after school to pay for
Speaker 4: gas and food, so she's a full time student also
Speaker 4: basically a full time worker. One of the most interesting
Speaker 4: elements I talked to her about, you know, going to
Speaker 4: a welding class. She's one of the only girls in class,
Speaker 4: and she says that when she talks to people at
Speaker 4: her daycare job about Teacat and says, this is great.
Speaker 4: You know, I'm going to school for free. I am
Speaker 4: wearing all this cool gear. I'm like lighting fire sticks
Speaker 4: of metal. They're just not interested in what they call
Speaker 4: guide jobs. She doesn't seem especially bothered by that, And
Speaker 4: I talk to a couple of other female students while
Speaker 4: I was there who say that they feel like for them,
Speaker 4: the sort of idea of manufacturing as a hyper masculine
Speaker 4: field is changing. But the reality is, of course that
Speaker 4: the distribution of students that you see in these classes
Speaker 4: is overwhelmingly male. I also talk to a man named
Speaker 4: Pierre Reid. He's fifty six and he's studying Industrial electrical maintenance,
Speaker 4: which basically will give MERC certificate that qualifies him for
Speaker 4: a job repairing machines in any typical factory. And for
Speaker 4: him this was actually coming out of years of working
Speaker 4: in manufacturing but not having a ton of opportunity to progress.
Speaker 2: I can't go any higher in that building unless the
Speaker 2: boss leaves. By attending TEACAT, a whole new world just
Speaker 2: opened up.
Speaker 4: He's spent his life in a variety of careers military, warehousing, farming, manufacturing,
Speaker 4: and now he works in the steel industry. And after
Speaker 4: a nine and a half hour shift cutting and lifting steel,
Speaker 4: he comes to Teacat because he wants to learn about
Speaker 4: the machines that he's running at his steel plant job.
Speaker 2: I wanted to know the engine out, so I wanted
Speaker 2: to learn how to repair or design at a given
Speaker 2: point maybe, And I didn't think that that was going
Speaker 2: to actually be possible at my age.
Speaker 4: And that's what I heard from a lot of folks
Speaker 4: who are later on in their careers that they've had
Speaker 4: exposure to these industries in a manufacturing job, but without
Speaker 4: the career advancement that a credential could provide them.
Speaker 2: Now, I love what I do playing with still cut
Speaker 2: and steal shape for mo fabricate, learning how the machine
Speaker 2: works to do that. TK shows that I can learn
Speaker 2: that here.
Speaker 4: The idea of the battery belt is not new. Nissan,
Speaker 4: which partnered in twenty seventeen with the Teacat to open
Speaker 4: this campus, began producing its Leaf electric cars in twenty
Speaker 4: eleven in Tennessee. And one of the students that I
Speaker 4: spoke to has actually been on that factory floor in Nissan,
Speaker 4: participating in this electric vehicle revolution before it really became
Speaker 4: a revolution. His name is Richard Lambert. He's thirty seven,
Speaker 4: and he's worked for the past decade or so as
Speaker 4: a stamper in the Nissan plant, which basically means he's
Speaker 4: fitting these large sheets of metal for car doors and
Speaker 4: fenders to molds that eventually produce a frame.
Speaker 5: At the while that specific job that I was on
Speaker 5: kind of just start feeling like a robot.
Speaker 4: And he got into this work study program that Nissan
Speaker 4: began offering last year as one of eight out of
Speaker 4: more than one hundred applicants to have the opportunity to
Speaker 4: go to school and learn how to do more machine
Speaker 4: tool technology to allow him to move to what's called
Speaker 4: the tool and die department, where basically he's going to
Speaker 4: be the one designing and repairing the molds that in
Speaker 4: the past he's been putting these big sheets of metal on.
Speaker 4: And Nissan's paying you to be here.
Speaker 5: Yeah, they're giving me my forty hour salary to be here,
Speaker 5: and they're paying for the schooling. Was good, gay I said,
Speaker 5: what works out?
Speaker 4: So it's a pathway that he described as really difficult
Speaker 4: to accomplish within the fact itself, but by going and
Speaker 4: earning this credential, he's effectively guaranteed that job and a
Speaker 4: ten dollars an hour raise that comes with it when
Speaker 4: he completes the credential that he's being paid his normal wage.
Speaker 5: To do it'd be really hard, especially for me being
Speaker 5: married and having kids at schoolwork and everything else. It
Speaker 5: would have been been a huge pain. So this program
Speaker 5: actually worked out very well for me.
Speaker 4: Obviously.
Speaker 1: Another part of this is allowing people not fresh out
Speaker 1: of high school to go for these types of jobs,
Speaker 1: and when thinking about Tennessee as a state. It has
Speaker 1: one of the lowest workforce participation rates in the country,
Speaker 1: and so there's a lot of people on the sidelines
Speaker 1: that could be going for these types of jobs. And
Speaker 1: you know, one conversation that I had with a Memphis
Speaker 1: official made it clear, you know, how this is certainly
Speaker 1: not lost on them that they have a urban core
Speaker 1: that is lower income, disproportionately people of color, and how
Speaker 1: how do we find a way for those people to
Speaker 1: get these good jobs, to help these locals skill up
Speaker 1: for these jobs. You know, city officials plan to open
Speaker 1: a one hundred and four thousand square foot skills training
Speaker 1: center in Memphis that will offer services like transportation and daycare,
Speaker 1: all of this for free. And so when we think
Speaker 1: about the types of obstacles that we hear from folks
Speaker 1: on why they can't have a job, a lot of
Speaker 1: times it's because there wasn't reliable public transportation to get there,
Speaker 1: they didn't have a car. It may be that kids
Speaker 1: were out of school and so they missed too many shifts.
Speaker 1: And so anything that can be done to kind of
Speaker 1: give these wrap around services to folks and really offer
Speaker 1: that opportunity, I think it's not lost on officials that
Speaker 1: they need to do that type of thing as well.
Speaker 4: You know, one thing that you notice when you walked
Speaker 4: into a TEACA campus and into a typical factory floor
Speaker 4: is that the manufacturing workforce in Tennessee is largely white.
Speaker 4: And so there's kind of these parallel efforts going on
Speaker 4: to change the idea of who can be a manufacturer
Speaker 4: and what it looks like for an influx of jobs
Speaker 4: to serve the entire community. How to build the pipeline
Speaker 4: in a way that's sustainable and gets folks into these
Speaker 4: really high paying quality jobs without continuing to leave some
Speaker 4: communities behind.
Speaker 3: When we come back, will Tennessee be able to find
Speaker 3: enough workers to meet the demands of the future. To read,
Speaker 3: When the students come out of these programs, what can
Speaker 3: they expect to earn? Is there a big payoff at
Speaker 3: the end.
Speaker 1: So we don't have a ton of data ourselves, but
Speaker 1: one teacat instructor said, at least for his graduates, they
Speaker 1: leave with a starting salary of between forty thousand and
Speaker 1: sixty five thousand dollars a year, with the idea and
Speaker 1: the opportunity to go much higher from that, but with
Speaker 1: no student debt and a job placed rate of one
Speaker 1: hundred percent. But I think when we think about these
Speaker 1: manufacturing salaries, it's important to think about the job market
Speaker 1: that we're in currently. Unemployment is quite low across the country.
Speaker 1: It's nearly a record low in Tennessee. And so you've
Speaker 1: also seen kind of hourly jobs places like BUCkies. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure if you're familiar, but a large gas station
Speaker 1: chain offering much higher hourly wages than you typically would
Speaker 1: in the past. People can go right out of high
Speaker 1: school and go earn that money without any training whatsoever.
Speaker 1: It's this really tough competition between Okay, do I take
Speaker 1: two years to invest in myself and go learn these
Speaker 1: skills for this job, or do I jump into the
Speaker 1: job market now while it's hot and try to earn
Speaker 1: as much money as I can. But what will be
Speaker 1: interesting is as the economy moves forward and it either
Speaker 1: does or doesn't fall in recession or as the labor
Speaker 1: market slows, what happens in terms of the the stability
Speaker 1: and safety of those jobs. From the perspective of these
Speaker 1: hourly jobs. Just thinking of Tennessee, overall government data shows
Speaker 1: us that in twenty twenty two, the annual mean wage
Speaker 1: was around fifty two thousand, eight hundred and twenty dollars.
Speaker 1: So write smack dab in the middle of that range
Speaker 1: that this particular TEACAT instructor was talking about. But when
Speaker 1: we think about that, that number includes a lot of
Speaker 1: very high wage jobs in the state as well as
Speaker 1: lower wage jobs in the state. So when you're comparing
Speaker 1: these manufacturing jobs, say to a food service job where
Speaker 1: you might make between twenty five thousand and thirty five
Speaker 1: thousand dollars a year, this is a job that would
Speaker 1: not only give you more money, but perhaps more of
Speaker 1: the opportunity to advance than a job like that. But
Speaker 1: I will note you know, that type of salary range
Speaker 1: is not like you're coming in and you're making the
Speaker 1: big bucks immediately, and I think that that's important to
Speaker 1: keep in mind when thinking about the payoff of these
Speaker 1: types of programs.
Speaker 4: But I will say what I generally heard from instructors
Speaker 4: and students at the teacos is that if your starting
Speaker 4: salary is kind of smack dab where the average salary
Speaker 4: is that you can earn in Tennessee, and everyone from
Speaker 4: the White House on down is saying, hey, we actually
Speaker 4: are bringing manufacturing back. This is a career that can
Speaker 4: be long and can be stable. It's an attractive long
Speaker 4: term offer. The way that folks in Tennessee like to
Speaker 4: phrase it is you're taking a bit on yourself, not
Speaker 4: to get a job, but to start a career.
Speaker 3: So read, they put this huge program in place, how's
Speaker 3: it working. How many students are they attracting now? And
Speaker 3: is it enough to fill out the need of all
Speaker 3: these manufacturers moving in.
Speaker 1: It's not quite enough to fill the need, and I
Speaker 1: think that they're aware of that. But where you've seen
Speaker 1: a lot of this growth is in this kind of
Speaker 1: dual enrollment of getting students in high school excited about
Speaker 1: these programs and signing up for them. But when it
Speaker 1: comes to adult enrollment, you've seen that broadly kind of
Speaker 1: flatline for the last couple of years. So you know,
Speaker 1: when thinking about the future, you really not only need
Speaker 1: to see this consistency, but you really do need to
Speaker 1: see this growth, especially as this state attracts more and
Speaker 1: more manufacturers to Tennessee.
Speaker 3: So a big challenge and a lot of money behind it.
Speaker 3: What are you looking for is you continue to report
Speaker 3: on this story, not just in Tennessee, but across this
Speaker 3: growing battery belt if it works.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think, you know, our headline really captures
Speaker 1: this of you know, the US is building more factories,
Speaker 1: are we going to have enough workers to fill them?
Speaker 1: And I think what we're seeing across different states. You know,
Speaker 1: Tennessee was early on this trend and got a head start,
Speaker 1: but everyone's starting to catch up with them, and you're
Speaker 1: starting to see this offer of will help you train
Speaker 1: your workers from governments as they try to convince employers
Speaker 1: to come to their states. We're starting to see that
Speaker 1: more and so it'll be interesting to see if that
Speaker 1: helps this problem, especially in the United States that's already
Speaker 1: struggling with some demographic issues and concerns about longer work shortages,
Speaker 1: whether these types of investments are enough to prevent this
Speaker 1: particular industry from seeing long standing worker shortages.
Speaker 3: Reed Mackenzie, thanks so much for coming on.
Speaker 4: The show, Thanks for having me, thanks for having.
Speaker 3: Us, Thanks for listening to us here at the Big Take.
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