Madison's Future Work Force: Are you part of it?

Bill Wineke's column in Sunday's Wisconsin State Journal:

Blue-collar jobs needed in Madison

State statistics predict that within the next 10 years Dane County will need 1,171 new carpenters, 806 electricians, more than 500 plumbers and more than 350 welders.

That's in addition to 5,143 salespeople, 1,148 bartenders and 3,549 waitresses and waiters.

The statistics come from my friend Jonathan Barry, who, among many other jobs, was Dane County executive for several years.

Jonathan is on a crusade, along with former Madison Mayor Paul Soglin, to get the city to pay real attention to the future need for blue-collar workers and the current supply of young people who desperately need the training to fill those jobs...

...In the meantime, Madison schools graduate 63 percent of their students who come from lower-income families and 96 percent of students who come from more economically fortunate families.

Comments

[Clinton]

Thank God. Maybe I can finally put my $350 "Bartending Degree" to use.

[Peter]

An honest question: does MATC offer the kind of training for "blue-collar" jobs like welding? Where I come from, in Fox Valley Technical College, there are lots of very well-respected programs for these kinds of jobs. General contractors and the like literally entice welding program students to leave after they finish their technical courses (and skip the gen-ed courses) to come work for them - at family-supporting wage levels.

Not everyone wants to go to college for a four-year university degree. So are we making it possible for those folks to succeed?

[Paul]

Peter:
Yes. And MATC is very much a part of the solution along with the building trades unions. Also, while Wineke mentioned "blue collar," many of the jobs are white collar, particularly date processing positions in financial services, insurance, and health.

[Peter]

Paul, to what do you attribute the 'failure' of the Madison public schools in their inability or unwillingness to satisfy the educational needs of those who are not coming from college-experienced families? Perhaps words like failure, inability, or unwillingness are too strong, but they're the ones that come to mind. And what might be possible solutions?