(The Center Square) – Louisiana lawmakers are pushing several laws meant to support and supercharge the state’s blue-collar workforce to meet the demands of the state’s economic comeback.
Like last year’s session included a “mini session” on insurance, this year’s includes one on workforce development, Rep. Kim Carver, R-Mandeville, told The Center Square.
The expected workforce demand is in the tens of thousands. Most are in trade jobs and construction. The expected demand is being met with changes to trade scholarships, school activities exposing students to blue collar opportunities, expanding the state’s capacity to teach and train in those fields, and other efforts aimed at steering more students and workers into high-demand skilled trades.
“This is about anticipating increased demand, and making sure we’re in position to meet it,” Susana Schowen, secretary of Louisiana Works, told The Center Square.
Schowenn testified before the House Education Committee on Wednesday, which heard several bills seeking to support those efforts.
One of those measures, House Bill 807 by Rep. Ken Brass, would create a new Workforce Instructor Capacity Investment Program within the Louisiana Community and Technical College System aimed at helping campuses recruit and retain the instructors needed to expand training in high-wage, high-demand fields. The bill creates a special fund that could be used for rapid-response instructor deployment tied to major economic development projects, recruitment incentives, contract instructors, salary supplements and accelerated program expansion, though it does not yet include a dollar amount. The bill passed the committee 13-1 with Rep. Beryl Amedee, R-Houma, voting against.
College system officials said the proposal is meant to address a basic bottleneck: not a lack of student interest, but a lack of instructors qualified to teach the skills employers need. Dr. Chandler LeBoeuf, the system’s vice president of education, said current higher education funding is not enough to meet the growing demand, especially when schools are competing with industrial employers that can often pay welders, line workers and other skilled tradespeople more than colleges can offer to teach.
“We just can’t traditionally pay what they can make in that industry,” LeBoeuf told The Center Square.
Brass is the author of a couple of bills that seek to offer greater incentives for blue-collar workers in the state, including lowering the eligibility requirements for TOPS-Tech award, which would make the state’s workforce scholarship more accessible to students pursuing technical and trade credentials. Another bill by Rep. Chris Turner, R-Ruston, that would increase the award amount.
House Bill 268 by Carver would require schools to give students earlier and more targeted exposure to high-demand careers.
“Many of those opportunities involve the skilled trades,” Carver told The Center Square. “With this bill we are seeking to develop a pipeline of Louisiana talent with our students.”
The bill requires certain career activities for middle school students to be tied to Louisiana Works’ priority sectors and requires at least one such activity before the end of fifth grade.
Legislation aside, Louisiana Economic Development has made efforts to pursue similar objectives, collaborating with state agencies and companies alike in a “whole of government” approach. As previously reported, the agency has committed to funding “workforce training centers” in collaboration with major companies investing in the state, including Hyundai and Bulldog Microchips. The agency has tasked themselves with making sure the jobs brought by the major investments stay in the state and don’t leave as soon as a project is complete.
“We want to create enough of a pipeline for them to go to another site in Louisiana to do the same kind of work,” Louisiana Economic Development Secretary Susan Bourgeois told a Senate committee on Monday.
The agency’s budget for next year includes $2.7M for “educational workforce development initiatives”.
With these efforts comes a great deal of spending, some already budgeted for and some still to be appropriated. The bills expanding the TOPS-Tech awards are likely to carry a hefty price tag.
According to the Legislative Fiscal Office, every 41 additional students who qualify for TOPS-Tech under Brass’s bill would mean about a $100,000 annual increase in state general fund spending, though the office said it could not estimate the total cost because it is unknown how many more students would qualify under the expanded rules. Currently, there is no fiscal note for Turner’s bill that would increase the award amount.
The workforce training centers to supply Hyundai and Bulldog Microchips with workers will be developed “at no cost to the company”.
In the midst of the rapid rise of artificial intelligence, blue-collar workers may be among those best positioned for the changes ahead. Carver said that he recently toured a facility in St. Tammany parish where he was told by an employer that “she would hire 100 welders right now.”
“The skilled trades are booming as a result of the AI revolution,” Schowenn said, though she added that she was not so pessimistic about white collar workers.
