While at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas, a conference of the nation’s thinkers, coders, makers and entrepreneurs, President Barrack Obama announced the upcoming growth to the TechHire initiative that will affect Raleigh’s community.
According to The White House, by 2020, Raleigh will grow technical maintenance, cyber defense and Java coding training programs. Raleigh will also place 50 nontraditionally trained individuals and 350 TechHire individuals into jobs. The Raleigh community will do this with the help of NC State University, Wake Technical Community College and other local training programs.
This past Friday, Obama announced that he plans to do four things to help TechHire grow and to encourage more individuals to pursue STEM careers. First, he plans to add 15 communities and over 200 individuals to the force nationwide. Second, he plans to strengthen and extend on-the-job training for international graduates of U.S. universities. Third, he will continue to grow the President’s Nation of Makers Initiative, and finally, Obama will advance career and technical education.
Obama has maintained that the workforce must have tech skills in order for have a healthy economic future and employment rates. He said that over 500,000 of the open jobs are in tech fields, and those jobs often pay more than 50 percent than those of the private sector.
TechHire is an initiative that focuses on providing individuals with the skills they need to quickly enter the workforce.