During the most recent Urban Land Institute Austin session, Tamara Atkinson and other leaders in workforce training shared the realities of the local economy, which will need more than 10,000 new skilled workers every year for roughly a decade. Those workers will help to carry out construction and production on major projects such as the Interstate 35 reconstruction, the Project Connect mass transit system, the expansion of Austin-Bergstrom International Airport and the assorted semiconductor manufacturing plants across the region that collectively represent tens of billions of dollars in investment.
Several times, talk turned to the city’s recent establishment of a new infrastructure training academy, which is intended to address the growing need for construction workers throughout the area.
Panelist Nestor Ho, chief legal officer of Silicon Labs, said the current employment imbalance shows there are 62,000 jobs available for 52,000 people who are classified as unemployed.