MEATA Online

DETROIT October 18, 2011 (AP) — Demand for construction and skilled trade workers is growing in Michigan, and apprentice programs are gearing up to help fill the need.

The increased demand is a boon to journeymen, apprentices and union officials who sweated out the past few years on unemployment or with part-time work as construction projects ground to a halt, The Detroit News reported today.

Don Kissel, director of a Detroit-area skilled-trade apprentice training program, keeps a list of out-of-work apprentices in his desk drawer at his Ferndale office. The list used to be three pages; now it fills barely three-quarters of one page.

"It's a sign people are starting to invest in the workforce," said Kissel of the Michigan Regional Council of Carpenters and Millwrights.

A comeback in commercial projects is behind the increased demand, officials said. Many projects are for businesses in education and health care. Lately, The News reported, more workers are enrolling in apprentice training programs, a union requirement for new workers.

The Michigan Department of Technology, Management and Budget said the number of construction and related jobs in the state is projected to grow 6.8 percent between 2008 and 2018. Michigan has averaged 124,725 construction jobs a month this year.

The manufacturing sector is even reporting a shortage of skilled trade workers, said John Challenger, chief executive at Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a Chicago-based job outplacement consulting firm.

"They can't find people with skills in the requisite areas like welding, mechanics and machinery," Challenger said. "There's a skills mismatch."

The news is a bright spot in Michigan's struggling economy. The state's seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was 11.2 percent in August, the third-highest in the nation for the period.

Frank Craddock, 49, of Trenton, was laid off after 17 years at an auto supplier and enrolled in a multiskilled maintenance program at Henry Ford Community College in Dearborn. He worked as a millwright, but now the same job requires more skills, he said.

"They want you to know more than machine repair," said Craddock, who plans to begin looking for a job at the end of the semester. "They want you to know welding and pipefitting and even electric work now."

The following video includes an interview with American University Economics Professor and Urban Institute Fellow Bob Lerman on CNN's 'Education Overtime." In the accompanying article (below the video) Lerman highlights the advantages of Registered Apprenticeship and promotes its expansion as a viable education and training option.

Below is the transcript of the article and accompanying interview which American University Economics Professor and Urban Institue Fellow Bob Lerman gave on CNN's "Education Overtime" - a seven week series that focuses on the conversations surrounding education issues that affect students, teachers, parents and the community.

If not college, then what?

(CNN) -- At dinner tables throughout the United States, there are tough conversations about the exploding cost of college, the rough job market, the pain of debt.

For parents and students, it adds up to the same question: Is college worth it?

But American University economics Professor Robert Lerman is asking something different: If college isn't worth it, what else is out there?

Lerman, an Urban Institute fellow, has studied youth unemployment for decades, and thinks the United States ought to try an updated version of an old technique for education and employment: apprenticeships.