President Obama is set to announce a new program Monday intended to help train workers for the 500,000 U.S. tech jobs that the White House says need filling.
The program will involve the federal government coordinating with cities and companies to boost tech training and coding, as well as a $100 million competitive grant program for training programs.
Jeff Zients, an economic adviser to Obama, said that the effort was meant to help fill positions for tech work that employers currently can’t fill and that pay better than most jobs.
“Too many Americans think that these jobs are out of their reach; that these jobs are only in places like Silicon Valley or that they all require an advanced degree in computer science,” Zients said on call with reporters Monday morning. “That’s just not the case. These well-paying IT jobs are all over the country from Albuquerque, to St. Louis, to Delaware.”
Obama is expected to discuss the plan Monday in a speech to the National League of Cities in Washington.
The TechHire initiative, as the White House program is called, will promote alternative training models and coding “boot camps” to give workers the skills required for many information technology jobs in as short a time as three to six months, Zients said.
Twenty-one communities are already involved in the program, and the Obama administration wants more to join.
The White House has also gotten commitments from private companies to aid the program, including Linkedin and Capital One.Capital One has committed to hiring for open positions based on demonstrated competency rather than academic credentials.
Greg Fischer, the mayor of Louisville, joined the call with Zients to tout Louisville’s version of the program, called Code Louisville. It’s a free, 12-week online program in which workers train by themselves and then get feedback and help from a mentor in shorter meetings each week.
Fischer said that there were 1,700 open tech positions in Louisville that could be filled by workers training in the program. “Demand for these jobs is outstripping supply in a pretty big way,” he said.
