The New Jersey Department of Labor & Workforce Development is celebrating National Apprenticeship Week through Friday. Business and trade organizations throughout the state have also joined in, including attending events with the American Training Center, International Union of Operating Engineers Local 825, Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory and Ideal Institute of Technology.
NJDOL also announced that the department distributed more than $9.06 million in Fiscal Year 2021 through four grant programs that support the growth of registered apprenticeship programs across the state.
The grant funds included: Growing Apprenticeship in Nontraditional Sectors, or GAINS, which awarded $3,112,633; NJ Pathways Leading Apprentices to a College Education, or NJ PLACE 2.0, which awarded $1,073,785; Pre-Apprenticeship in Career Education, or PACE, which awarded $3,385,273; and Youth Transitions to Work, or YTTW, which awarded $1,493,163. In total, 29 contracts have been awarded under these program funds, contributing to the recruitment of 1,565 apprentices.
Since Gov. Phil Murphy took office in January 2018, 545 new Registered Apprenticeship programs have been created in New Jersey — an 89% increase — and on-boarded 8,747 new apprentices. The state currently has 8,957 active apprentices in 1,156 programs. Notably, under the Murphy administration, apprenticeship grant programs funded by the state have more than doubled the number of women in registered apprenticeship programs in this state.
“Apprenticeship programs are a critical component to recovering our workforce from the pandemic, as well as to continue building our talent pipelines for emerging industries, like the wind-energy sector being established right here along our coast,” Labor Commissioner Robert Asaro-Angelo said in a prepared statement. “We’ve taken the earn-while-you-learn model perfected by the building trades and opened it to a wide variety of positions — from computer systems analysts, pharmacy technicians, human resources employees, water treatment plant operators and even programs that further fusion energy research.”
NJDOL plans to announce Notice of Grant Opportunities for a new round of GAINS and PACE funding later this week.
To see current notices of grant opportunity, click here.
For more information on the New Jersey Office of Apprenticeship, click here.
