Williamsport, PA
July 11, 2024
Thank you all so much, and thank you Stefanie, for that introduction. I know you said you were nervous, but you did not seem nervous at all. Stories like yours are exactly why we do what we do. You've already heard that today, but I want you to hear that from me as well.
Honestly, your ability to bring your tremendous talent and drive to making this country better is something that we all benefit from and we all appreciate very, very much. So thank you for sharing your story and for that introduction.
I also want to thank President Michael Reed for his extraordinary leadership here at PCT and to all of the staff and the faculty who've welcomed me and my team here and who have helped to make today possible.
And to Mayor Slaughter for your history-making leadership here, in the city, for welcoming me to your beautiful city. I'm really just delighted to come and share with all of you the intersection between President Biden's vision for this country and the really important work that you are doing right here in Williamsport.
Let me say one thing to my friend and colleague, Neera Tanden. Neera, as she said, is the principal advisor to the president on building his vision of a worker-centered domestic policy in this country.
Neera has been a key architect of President Biden's Investing in America agenda, which has put more than $16.7 billion in Pennsylvania alone to make sure that we have safe roads and bridges, to make sure that every family that turns on the faucet has clean drinking water, to provide every community with high-speed reliable, affordable internet, and to build industries that have been so long underinvested in this country that we have become overdependent on things being made elsewhere. The president believes, as I do, that there's no reason why we can't make things in America – the same things that we invent, we should be able to make. And, why we can't both solve the climate crises that we're facing and a good jobs crisis at the same time.
We can build our clean energy future while we make sure that jobs are good jobs. And that's the vision that we are so excited about. And we want to make sure, in doing so, that we have the workforce, as Neera mentioned.
So, let me say it this way. When the president invests in the physical infrastructure, we also think about it as the good jobs that are being created. And, so we also need a similar infrastructure that will connect people to the good jobs that are being created, and employers to the people that they need. And that's what we're here to talk about today.
I call that our nation's opportunity infrastructure. Making those roads and bridges as strong as our physical roads and bridges is really, really important to opportunity and to a really strong economy.
But, just like our physical infrastructure, that opportunity infrastructure has needed some attention, has needed some work. It's had some cracks and some potholes. Some communities pay tolls that others don't have to pay. Whatever the infrastructure metaphor you want to use, we need to make sure that our opportunity infrastructure is strong and that it reaches every single community.
Too many training programs in the past have trained for skills that might be needed for jobs that might be coming. And I see our state apprenticeship director nodding her head because those of us who are concerned about connecting people to opportunity know that we have to fix those things. We can't be making bridges to nowhere. Nobody wants to get on them, and there's a good reason for that.
So, a strong opportunity infrastructure starts with a job. It starts with good jobs. It starts with employer needs. In this Investing in America, President Biden's America, we are creating more jobs than have ever been created in the same amount of time under any president – almost 16 million jobs since the president came into office.
It's not just the number of jobs. It's also the quality of jobs. It's good jobs. It's good union jobs. It's jobs that put people on the pathway to the middle class, allowing them to support their families, allowing them to do something the president says all the time, which is look their children in the eyes and say, "everything's going to be ok," and mean it.
It starts with employers signaling the jobs they're going to need, signaling the skills they're going to need so that those skills can be met.
Because by the time that an employer's ready to hire, it's too late to start training people. So that signaling part is really important and that takes partnerships like that kind that have been developed here at PCT.
Also, in this interconnected opportunity infrastructure, I think of registered apprenticeships as the superhighways. They are connected to a good job, making sure that any individual has the skills needed to that job, and ensuring that alignment between programs and job needs.
Colleges like the one that we that we are at here are really the onramps. I could really go on about infrastructure metaphors for a very long time and about how to connect these things.
But the registered apprenticeship programs as superhighways with PCT as the onramp is exactly how we're going to connect people, including people who have been underinvested in, been left out, left behind for too long, to the good jobs that are being created in communities across the country, including right here in Williamsport.
So, part of what we think about a lot and what the president has been very clear on is that we have to be the economy that leaves no one left behind. And that's also where colleges like PCT come in, as a space where people who might have been counted out, might have been told by too many people that they don't have the skills, they don't have the ability.
We know that it's not a skills problem. It's not a lack of talent or a lack of drive. It's a lack of building the roads and bridges that connect to all people so that they can actually find a smooth onramp to the jobs that have been created. And that is a part of investing in America.
And that's why we are thrilled to announce the largest combined competitive investment in apprenticeships in this country's history. This one-time $244 million investment across the country is going to help to modernize, to diversify, and to expand registered apprenticeship programs across the country, including right here at the Pennsylvania College of Technology.
Today, we are joined by our Pennsylvania State Apprenticeship Training Office, by employers, by community-based organizations, by workforce boards, and local government leaders like our wonderful mayor, and schools. Because to build this infrastructure right, everybody's got to be a part of it. There's got to be connectivity between what each of you do and the rest of the system.
Many of you understand this well because you all were a part of MIDAS, which reinvented apprenticeships to meet employer demands in advanced manufacturing.
Again, this is not happening by accident. This is happening because President Biden had the vision for making things in America again and creating all the right incentives to do so.
MIDAS has trained over 4,000 apprentices and pre-apprentices in Advanced Manufacturing modules with 163 employers in 27 states and territories.
And through MIDAS, the number of advanced manufacturing Registered Apprenticeships went from 1 to 7 on this campus alone.
The Department of Labor was really proud to support MIDAS and today, we are here to announce $4 million for MIDAS because PCT knows how to do this right.
You have a proven success record, a track record, that we want to build on and you are building that strong, interconnected workforce system that is a model for the rest of the country.
Today's grant will help expand your terrific work that you are doing here to take partnerships from your Registered Apprenticeships and expand them into new pre-apprenticeship programs.
For thousands of students, for thousands of tomorrow makers, for thousands of talented young people like Stephanie, this is going to be a bridge – I told you I could do infrastructure metaphors – this will be the bridge from poverty to prosperity, from insecurity to real opportunity.
I'm really proud to build on the roads and bridges that you have already built, to continue to invest in those, and to celebrate the roads and bridges that you are going to be building.
So, let's build together.
Thank you.