Salina Julin was an unfocused millennial, drifting from job to job without a plan a few years ago.
Today, Julin, 27, is a Graco warehouse supervisor, who found what she now considers a career position thanks to the New Brighton office of Volt Workforce Solutions.
Volt and Graco are among dozens of partners linked together on Trades Hub, a not-for-profit brainchild of BridgeWorks. It's an electronic platform that links young people, particularly women and minorities, to industrial and manufacturing employers, as well as area two-year colleges, nonprofit training organizations and scholarships.
Before the COVID-19 health crisis and instant recession, employers of almost all stripes were hungry for workers. The employment gains made by women and minorities since 2010 — including in technology, health care, business services and construction trades — were double or more the growth in the overall Twin Cities job market during the economic recovery.
Employment of people of color in the seven-county area rose 50% to 430,520 between 2010 and 2018, according to the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development. Total employment grew only 17% over those years to 1.98 million people.
Baby boomers, the generation with the highest portion of white workers, must be replaced as they retire. And Trades Hub was set up to help by the diverse management team at BridgeWorks, a consulting firm with a 22-year record in the Twin Cities.
Chuck Webster, 57, a former securities analyst and owner of BridgeWorks, spent a couple of years developing Trades-Hub.com as a video-laden, easy-to-navigate intersection for employers, scholarship providers, schools, career-training and workforce-development organizations and others.
The idea is to connect with young people, many of whom are drifting after high school, who might pursue opportunities doing the important work of manufacturing, building and fixing things in careers that amount to $50,000-plus careers within a few years.
