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Stimulus money will boost EV job training
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About $7 million in federal stimulus money will enable Maricopa Workforce Connections to help hundreds more displaced workers upgrade their skills for future employment.
The U.S. Department of Labor this week announced state allotment levels for employment and training programs funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.
The work force investment system will use the $3.5 billion to help Americans get back to work through the national network of one-stop career centers.
"It can be used to help folks who have been laid off through education and training programs," said Peggy Abrahamson, Department of Labor spokeswoman. "Primarily the states do this through the one-stop career centers, and there's well over 3,000 around the country."
Arizona will receive $42.85 million for work-force investment, and of that Maricopa Workforce Connections is estimated to receive about $7million, said Patrick Burkhart, assistant director of human services in the Workforce Division of Maricopa County.
Maricopa Workforce Connections has two career centers in Maricopa County, one in Gilbert and the other in the West Valley. The Gilbert center offers skills assessment, career development and retraining, and placement services.
Both offices have been flooded with displaced workers desperate to find other jobs and/or obtain training or certification to become qualified for more jobs, Burkhart said.
"We're expecting this fiscal year ... in our two centers combined we'll see somewhere between 130,000 to 140,000 customer visits," he said. "To put that in perspective, the last fiscal year we saw 80,000."
The Arizona Department of Economic Security will receive the money and then disburse it to Maricopa Workforce Connections and other career centers across the state, Burkhart said.
"It provides us a real opportunity to give customers who are eligible for our services a chance to upgrade their skills ... such that when the recovery does in fact take place, we can have an enhanced work force here to support some of the economic development agenda," he said. "We want to upgrade that work force and give people competitive job skills, and that's really where a majority of this investment is going to go."
The funding will be available to Maricopa Workforce Connections around April 15, Burkhart said.
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