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Source: WhiteHouse.gov
Mayor Eric Garcetti announced today that Los Angeles will join President Obama’s nationwide TechHire Initiative. The program, a component of the Administration’s effort to restore middle-class economics, is designed to train disadvantaged Americans for jobs in the tech industry that can afford them a comfortable standard of living.
According to a statement from the White House, approximately 5 million job positions are open in the United States, over half of which are in information technology fields such as cybersecurity, software development, and network administration. The average salary these jobs provide, the statement reported, is 50 percent higher than the average job in the American private sector. TechHire, the Administration hopes, will fulfill these national labor demands while enabling more Americans to earn a sustainable income.
The federal initiative will target individuals often marginalized in the tech industry: women, people of color, and veterans, as well as those whose socioeconomic backgrounds, physical or mental disabilities, or personal responsibilities (such as child care) impede their efforts to develop technological skills.
Los Angeles’s contributions will focus on the Los Angeles High Impact Information Technology, Entertainment-Entrepreneurship, and Communication Hubs (LA HI-TECH) regional consortium, which aims to educate and train students within a network of 38 high schools and community colleges to work in the tech, entertainment, and communication industries.
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Source: LA HI-TECH
"LA's tech economy is growing at a breakneck speed, and we simply can't afford to leave any Angelenos on the sidelines," Garcetti said in a statement released by the city. "Our TechHire Initiative will help train our deep and diverse homegrown talent pool to compete for these high-paying, 21st-century jobs. Their success will benefit our neighborhoods, our economy, and our city as a whole."
LA HI-TECH plans to work in conjunction with Amazon Web Services to develop cloud-computing curriculum intended to help students earn their Associate’s degrees and other credentials for IT jobs. The organization aims to circumvent the standardized four-year university degree requirement, allowing Americans to acquire the skills necessary to succeed in tech through faster, more accessible, and more affordable means.
The city is eligible for a grant from the U.S. Department of Labor, which is holding a $100 million competition to fund programs with a proven history of helping disenfranchised groups land jobs in technology.
Los Angeles joins 20 other regions in the effort, including the cities of St. Louis and New York and the state of Delaware. As a participant in the program, each region has committed to conducting data-driven assessment of employer demand, developing accelerated training models, and hosting local tech meetups.
