Job Retraining

This is an interesting piece on job retraining program, using Appalachian coal miners as an example. The reality is that job retraining programs are usually disastrous because there aren’t actually decent paying jobs in the places these people live. Yet politicians love them because it makes it sound like government cares about these workers and is preparing them for some good old fashioned bootstraping. But then they finish these programs and where are the jobs? They aren’t in Kentucky or West Virginia. Or Flint or the Oregon timber towns for that matter. But can the government do more to make these programs effective? Possibly:

It would be wrong, however, to write off coal country completely, or to underestimate the abilities of former coal miners. In a fascinating article in Matter, Lauren Smiley highlights an intriguing initiative in Kentucky to offer specialized job re-training to former coal miners in a well-paid, in-demand field that doesn’t necessarily require relocating: coding. Smiley’s piece focuses on BitSource, Kentucky’s first Web development firm that was founded by the former owners of a land-moving company. BitSource is still new, and small—the first trainee class included only 10 former miners (out of 900 applicants)—but if the model can be scaled, miners might just have a shot at landing high-paying jobs without having to move or wait for a new industry to set up shop in Appalachia. Efforts are also underway to expand other tele-working opportunities in the region, although coding generally offers higher wages.

Coal mining, as Smiley notes, involves more than pure physical labor. Miners “calculate daily shock reports, operate complex machinery, and draft plans to get coal out of a mountain”—all tasks that make them better-suited to coding than one might expect. BitSource’s coders underwent an intensive, 22-week training program (during which time they were paid $15 per hour, from federal funds). The start-up pieced together the open-sourced curriculum from websites like Lynda.com. BitSource is hoping to again train a new group of former miners early next year.

Well, maybe? A job retraining program needs to do two things. First, it needs to train workers for existing jobs. Second, it needs to train workers for jobs in the places where they live. You can’t expect mass migrations out of West Virginia to Texas if there are more jobs there. That’s not realistic and many workers simply can’t leave for reasons ranging from family to poverty. So maybe the coding thing makes sense. Despite stereotypes, these aren’t stupid people. They are just regular people. No doubt a lot of them could be retrained for something like coding.

Also, direct subsidies of workers’ income should happen, especially in circumstances where industries have shut down because the government decided environmental protection is more important:

The TAA program includes a feature designed for older workers who chose not to undergo job re-training, but were able to find a lower-paying job: a wage subsidy. “I think it’s an interesting alternative to job training for older workers that may not have the time to reap the benefits of training in a new occupation,” Berk says.

Barnow, the George Washington University economist, points out that such a program might be particularly sensible for coal workers suffering the health effects of decades of coal mining. “A lot of them have lung damage too, so taking a lower-paying job that’s indoors might make a lot of sense,” he says. “The subsidy would help cushion that.”

I would certainly support this, although no doubt those who freak out about “welfare” will call this process of keeping 60 year old men with black lung out of poverty a giveaway we can’t afford. I would say that it’s a question of doing the right thing by people who have given up their lives and their health to heat American homes.