When the Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce formed a job-training partnership with two local welding companies last fall, the market for welders was promising.
So promising that the companies hoped to hire the trainees after graduation.
Indeed, the 10 weeks of full-time training was tailored to meet the companies’ specific needs. And federal dollars paid for the program.
But due in part to the economy, many of the jobs that had once been available dried up. Only half the dozen graduates were hired.
“Almost overnight, the demand disappeared,” said spokesman Othello H. Meadows III. “The pain that different employers were feeling kind of trickled down.”
Likewise, another federally funded training program to fill the demand for ophthalmic assistants in Omaha resulted in only four job offers out of eight who started the course. That program, too, was designed to prepare unemployed Omahans in a field business leaders saw then as hot and hiring.
The scenarios offer broader insight into shrinking employment opportunities for hard-to-employ adults with barriers such as child care and lack of transportation. That was the target population for the training programs that were coordinated by the chamber-driven Omaha Workforce Collaborative, Metropolitan Community College and employers.
Most of the trainees came from north and South Omaha, said Meadows, who was hired to run the 2-year-old Workforce Collaborative. He works with employers to identify fields with hiring potential, and then a job training program is tailored to prepare a work force.
Meadows said he has been disappointed with the tightening of the market the last nine months, but he said more companies recently have started to talk to him about training a pool of workers for their needs.
“A few months ago, everybody was playing things so close to the vest, there was no discussion of new partnerships,” said Meadows. “Now we are starting to have those discussions.”
Some of the already trained workers who didn’t land jobs chose to continue their education at Metro. Meadows said they are prepared to move into jobs that could open later.
Contact the writer: 444-1224, cindy.gonzalez@owh.com
Copyright ©2012 Omaha World-Herald®. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, displayed or redistributed for any purpose without permission from the Omaha World-Herald.
