Governor Steve Sisolak and U.S. Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh attend a meeting with Nevada’s workforce leaders to discuss how the American Jobs Plan will effect Nevada at CSN’s Charleston Campus Tuesday, June 22, 2021.
Tuesday, June 22, 2021 | 3:32 p.m.
Nevada will get almost $4 million from the federal Department of Labor as part of $130 million earmarked for workforce development nationwide.
The grant to develop apprenticeship programs was announced during a meeting that included Labor Secretary Marty Walsh and Gov. Steve Sisolak. Participants stressed the need for skilled laborers.
“If you learn how to hang sheetrock, if you learn how to be a carpenter or electrician or plumber, boy, those are the skills that last forever and they’re so desperately needed,” Sisolak said.
The money was awarded to the Governor’s Office of Workforce Development and is separate from billions of dollars in federal coronavirus relief funds earmarked for Nevada. Fourteen other states received funding under the measure.
“A job just isn’t a paycheck,” Sisolak said. “A job is dignity. A job is something that people have that they can look at themselves a little bit differently.”
Other participants in today’s meeting included representatives from the city of Las Vegas, the College of Southern Nevada and the Nevada System of Higher Education. They said they wanted to see more focus on classes like shop and home economics in high school and expanding diversity in apprenticeships.
Walsh said a focus on college education has pushed people away from skilled labor jobs when both are important.
“We’ve spent a lot of time the last 20 years talking about going to college … That’s still important,” Walsh said. “But we have tons of young people who have graduated college with a degree that don’t know what to do with that degree, and then when I go around to a manufacturer or I talk to the trades … there’s a shortage of workers potentially.”
Sisolak said there can be misconceptions among some high school students about the salaries associated with skilled labor jobs.
“When you learn the value of being a carpenter or an electrician or a chef or whatever it might be, you’re talking good jobs. I mean these are careers. These aren’t minimum-wage jobs,” Sisolak said. “Someone will say, ‘I don’t want to be a plumber. I don’t want to make $9 an hour.’ I’m like, ‘Are you kidding me? You have no idea how much plumbers make.’”
Walsh’s visit was part of a nationwide tour to drum up support for the American Jobs Plan, an omnibus infrastructure package tied up in behind-the-scenes negotiations in Washington, D.C.
Walsh, who called the legislation “transformational for the American economy,” said that while talks over a potential bipartisan compromise on the plan were still ongoing, their nature is changing constantly.
“We’re moving the ball down the field. I think that’s the best way of describing it, and it continues to move forward,” Walsh said.
His visit was the second by a cabinet-level member of the Biden administration in as many weeks.
On June 10, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm visited the state to tout the American Rescue Plan’s potential clean energy investments.
