Washington, D.C. – March, 8, 2017: Earlier today, former U.S. House of Representatives Labor, Health and Human Services and Education (Labor-HHS) Appropriations Subcommittee Chair Jack Kingston, along with Susan Fallon, Vice President of Global Strategy and Business Development for Monster Government Solutions, testified before the Labor-HHS Subcommittee during its annual public witness hearing. Kingston and Fallon reiterated the importance of Job Corps’ career technical education services and the continued need to invest in job skills training in order to close the “skills gap.”
“Job Corps is a critical lynchpin in closing the skills gap nationwide,” Kingston said. “I strongly believe that the way toward sustainable job growth in these communities is to invest in the mechanisms like the Job Corps program to educate and develop necessary skills in an effort to create and maintain these jobs in a way that adapts to a changing economy.”
According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, there are 5.6 million jobs that remain unfilled because employers cannot find workers with the right set of skills. According to some estimates, the skills gap costs our economy $160 billion annually. Job Corps is a comprehensive education and vocational training program administered by the U.S. Department of Labor that each year helps 50,000 underserved youth ages 16 through 24.
“We’ve learned over time that small and large businesses across the nation trust their Job Corps centers and Job Corps graduates to meet their talent needs as evidence by that fact that over 100 local chambers of commerce, from Oklahoma to Connecticut and Florida to Alaska, have signed letters of support for the program,” Fallon said. “That is why Monster Government Solutions worked with the National Job Corps Foundation for Youth Opportunities to create and launch our Youth Opportunities portal, which provides students with online career tools and resources, and employers with tools to be matched to thousands of skilled young Americans, using Monster’s award-winning technologies.”
In 2016, Monster and the National Job Corps Foundation for Youth Opportunities announced a strategic partnership to help support current and future Job Corps students with career development training and job placement, as well as to provide local employers with a dependable source of highly skilled workers. The goal of the initiative is to have more than 5,000 students trained, ready and uploaded on a customized, easy-to-use web portal that matches job applicants with local Job Corps campus employer partners.
For further information:
www.njcaweb.org
www.youthopps.monster.com