Just a few years ago, the nonprofit Merit America was seen as a promising on-ramp for workers in the tech industry. They were one of only two sector-based training programs to take part in Google’s Career Certificates Fund, which aimed to get 20K Americans the training they need to work in high-demand tech jobs.

Having now served over 15K learners in the tech space, Merit America is making a pivot—expanding beyond tech to advanced manufacturing. Eventually, they plan to add HR as another career track.

The Big Idea: With layoffs at tech companies and entry-level jobs threatened by automation and AI, Merit America isn’t the only sector-based training program to rethink their tech training. Others, including Year Up United, Project Quest, and Jewish Vocational Service, are doing the same.....

.....Frieda Molina, director of economic mobility, housing, and communities at the social policy research organization MDRC, says she’s hearing from other sector-based programs focused on tech that it’s getting harder to place people into entry-level jobs. Fresh rounds of layoffs at companies like Meta will only make it harder.....

.....Merit America, too, has been seeing industries like finance, healthcare, and transportation take a growing proportion of its tech grads. But expanding into manufacturing jobs is a bigger pivot. Molina, of MDRC, says it’s wise the organization has partnered with a community college to make the move and continue to grow.

“When folks talk about the sector programs that nonprofits run, one of the criticisms of these programs is that they’re small and that they can’t scale,” Molina says. “But we have an institutional system in this country that offers training—community colleges. There are many of them, and the benefit is that they can serve more students.”

The Robot in the Room: One area for growth in all sector-based programs is incorporating AI skills into the curriculum and keeping up with the rapid changes to the job market that AI is bringing. At a recent MDRC-hosted meeting of nonprofits that run sector-based programs, attendees said they felt more reactive than proactive regarding AI and worried they were training people for jobs that AI would soon eliminate.....

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