Remarks by Acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su at the Unlocking Employer Pathways Summit (As Delivered)

Washington, DC
June 3, 2024

Good morning everybody! It's so wonderful to be with you all.

I want to first say thank you to Amy—Dr. Loyd. My team and I have so appreciated the work with you and with Secretary Cardona. I don't know if the Departments of Labor and Education have ever worked as closely together as they are today, but I also hope that it is—rather than being repetitive for you to hear me speak now, after those two amazing women—I hope it's comforting that there's so much alignment between the work that we are doing. And this Summit is just one of many examples of the effective and visionary approach of both Amy and Secretary Cardona in our efforts as an administration to create real opportunity for all, across this country.

And of course to the brilliant and talented Neera Tanden, who it has just been a joy to work with, who leads all of our domestic policies. So all of this work that we're doing thank you so much, Neera, for your leadership and your friendship. It's been really, really key to everything that we've that we've done especially as we are, as you said, turbocharging this work in the last year.

And I want to acknowledge April also who is the Chief People Officer at Micron, and we've been in the same place for a number of things of late, and it's an example of, I think, the great things that can happen when there's such alignment between administration and job creators like you and like all of you in this room.

So at the Department of Labor, we're very proud to be part of this Unlocking Career Success Initiative, and you're going to hear more directly from individuals who have been impacted by this initiative later today when Manny Lamarre from my team is on a panel and engages in discussion with some of those folks.

But just by way of introduction, for me, I just wanted to share that one of the best parts of my job is being able to travel the country and to meet with young people. And one of the things that I got to do was meet with about a hundred young people at one of the summits that Amy mentioned. It was part of, it was the first-ever, Youth Policy Summit. And at that summit there was a young man who got up and said, "everyone always talks about young people are the future, but we are here right now." And I thought it was an important point that young people are the right now and there are young people right now with talent, with desire, with hunger, with the will to work and to contribute in their communities. And we have to do it right, right now.

And the way that President Biden sees us doing right now is to make sure that we are creating, alongside all of you, good jobs so that every single person can get a good job in their community to contribute, to build, and to live a secure life. Because as we know and have been saying, good jobs change lives.

I know that very personally. I know that, when my mom got a job at the county in Los Angeles where we lived, which moved us from poverty to the middle class, because that job had all the traits that Amy mentioned that are part of our Good Jobs Principles—a decent salary, health benefits so we could go to the doctor when we were sick, a pension so that she could retire with dignity. And so the things that we want for everybody are the kinds of things that we're investing in today.

And under President Biden, we are in a historic period of job growth. Over 15 million jobs have been created since our President came into office. This is the most of any President in the same time period and it is far more than most people predicted would be possible.

And so a big part of the reason for the historic job growth is what Neera mentioned. It's President Biden's Investing in America agenda. This includes investing in clean energy and a clean climate. It includes making sure that we can produce things here in America again, whether that's cars or electric batteries or semiconductor chips. And it also includes infrastructure. Hundreds of thousands of miles of safe roads and bridges, more and better-connected public transportation systems, ensuring that every family who turns on the faucet in their homes can have clean drinking water and that every single community has access to high-speed reliable Internet.

And these historic investments in manufacturing, in clean energy, in infrastructure, are creating good jobs across America.

So sometimes people ask me, I hear this all the time and maybe you're asking it too, "Are we going to have the workers to fill all these jobs?" And the answer is yes, if we make sure that they are good jobs and if we focus on connecting young people to these opportunities.

And for that, we need a workforce system that works. So I think of our workforce system as infrastructure, too. It's the roads and bridges that connect people to the good jobs they want and need and employers to the people they want and need. And for too long we've thought of it as one-off programs, or one employer looking at one community and trying to find their workforce, rather than as an interconnected system.

And that is the way that our workforce infrastructure has not really worked seamlessly, right? It's not really been a connected system in which people can find the people that they need and find the jobs that they need. 

So what I refer to it, you know, that system is that it's like our physical infrastructure in that it's had some potholes. It's got some cracks. It doesn't lead to every community the way that it should. And too many training programs have trained in skills that might be needed for jobs that might materialize.

Not anymore. Those are roads to nowhere, and we are rebuilding that infrastructure.

And I always say this, but a good job training program should not end in a job search; it should end in an actual good job. So for that to happen, employers have to be active participants in creating this interconnected system that connects employers to the people that you need and people to the opportunities that you create.

And I call this our country's opportunity infrastructure.

So, it starts with identifying the need—the kinds of jobs and the skills required—and signaling that need early, because by the time that you actually need to hire, it's too late to pay that infrastructure, right? It's too late to hope that those roads and bridges exist. It's too late for that interconnected workforce training system that exposes young people early to the things that you need, will work.

And at the Department of Labor, we are working hand-in-hand with the Department of Education to build the connective tissue between employers, between workers, between unions, workforce system participants, between educational institutions and community-based organizations that often serve the most vulnerable individuals.

For too long, I think we as a country have said that some people just lack the skills and that is why they've been left out of opportunity. Not now, not this time, not on our watch.

So I'm talking about the same people that Amy mentioned and Neera mentioned: communities of color, women, people who've been involved with the justice system, young people who are disconnected from school and work, and so many others.

And in our country these inequities start way too young. So I was with young people in a pre-apprenticeship program in Oregon, one of the connected parts of the system that I'm talking about. And these people were, you know, in their teens, in their early 20s, and they were working with 3D printers. And they said, "I didn't know that that was a real thing. I didn't know it was actually a thing as 3D printers until I got this program and I got to use them, I got to see them work, and now I'm going to be able to do jobs that also use them."

And I think that was great, it's great that these programs are introducing people to such things, but we also know—and I know you all know—that there are kids in some communities as young as 3rd and 4th grade who are using 3D printers, so the examples of those inequities are exactly the kinds of things that when we have a true connected and effective opportunity infrastructure, we eliminate the idea that some people in some communities are going to have opportunity and others are not going to have it.

And so this opportunity infrastructure that we are building is going to reach into all communities and connect them, through effective on-ramps, not just to jobs but to real careers where educational institutions are also part of that interconnected system that prepares people with skills for the jobs it their communities.

So we are building it. It works, and we want you to be a part of it.

Another thing I hear all the time is that young people are told that you have to get a four-year college degree, or you have failed. And that's simply not true, and I'm really proud to work alongside Secretary Cardona, and Amy, and the team at the Department of Education to change this message. Because, as Neera mentioned, President Biden's Investing in America agenda is about creating good paying careers that do not require a four-year college degree Even if, as been said, something more than high school is needed, the default for too long has been a four-year college degree. And we cannot be telling our nation's young people that there's one right path and everything else is a fallback position.

I meet with young people all across the country, as I mentioned, filled with talent filled with energy, filled with excitement, who are hungry to get a good job and to do a good job in it. And many of them are in, what has already been mentioned, Registered Apprenticeship programs.

So in the opportunity infrastructure, Registered Apprenticeships are the superhighways. Right? They're not one-off courses. They start with the jobs, and they're always created in partnership with employers. And then they go all-in on the skills that are needed, using experiential, hands-on learning. Young people and people in mid-career are paid while they are learning, which is an important piece of expanding opportunity in an equitable way. And they are given the tools, literally and figuratively, to succeed.

And in the past, Registered Apprenticeships have often been associated primarily with construction jobs, right, and blue collar jobs. But that's not the full picture. Registered Apprenticeships can be the superhighways to any industry, and in this administration, we have expanded them dramatically—from financial services to software engineers to battery manufacturing to cybersecurity to teachers. And I want to acknowledge our union leaders who are in the room, especially in the educational space, who we've worked with to create teacher apprenticeships in over 34 states, 34 states across the country and in Puerto Rico, that did not exist before this administration came in.

So we're looking at Registered Apprenticeships as a superhighway into all kinds of careers, and it's something that we know that many of you are working on and would love to work with you to expand.

We know that Registered Apprenticeships are a proven way to build a diverse pipeline of skilled workers. And we are making sure that educational institutions are part of that effort, right, that programs in community colleges are part of the pre-apprenticeship that makes it possible for all people to succeed in apprenticeship programs, So, I think of community colleges as on-ramps, one of many types of on-ramps that we should have, because, again, four-year degrees not the only path for people to succeed and to get to the destinations that they want to get to.

So we want to make sure that you're hearing loudly and clearly and that young people are hearing loudly and clearly that there are multiple pathways to get to the good jobs that we are creating.

It's not enough to create these good jobs if some people do not see themselves as part of them, so all of our work is about making sure that we're reaching into communities have been left out for far too long. Because a good job, early in life, can set a young person up for a lifetime of success. It makes them expect to be treated with dignity if their first job gives them that. It makes them expect to live a life of security if they can see a pathway to that.

And President Biden—and all of us the administration and I—want to make sure that every young person has that feeling, that there is an opportunity for them in their community, in which they can live a life of security and be treated with dignity.

And we want every employer to also feel that you can, seamlessly, because the roads and bridges that people use are built in partnership with you and lead to you in a way that doesn't require so much thought every single time you need to hire.

So please help us build this system. It's a vision of America where young people are a part of building what we are doing right now in this moment, not in some distant future. And we look forward to building that with you, to the conversations that we are going to have for the rest of today.

And again, the invitation is wide open, and we are working with so many already in the room and want to work with all of you to make sure that we are building the opportunity infrastructure, so thank you all so much and enjoy the rest of the conversation today.

Delivered By
Acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su