Ford CEO Jim Farley and Jamie Dimon Launch $2 Billion Michigan LIFT Initiative to Address Skilled Trades Shortage
Ford CEO Jim Farley and JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon announced Michigan LIFT, a $2 billion public-private initiative to support skilled trades, as a new report warns of 1.7 million annual openings through 2035 and a training pipeline that prepares only 55 workers for every 100 needed.
Ford CEO Jim Farley and JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon have announced a $2 billion public-private initiative aimed at strengthening the skilled trades pipeline in the United States, as new data shows employers will need to fill about 1.7 million skilled-trades openings each year through 2035.
The initiative, called Michigan LIFT (Launchpad for Industrial Innovation & Transformation), will see Ford aspire to award up to $1 billion in contracts to participating suppliers over the next decade, while JPMorgan Chase aspires to provide up to $1 billion in financing to suppliers. The announcement came alongside the first major public report from the Alliance for America’s Skilled Trades, a corporate coalition launched this summer by Ford, BlackRock, Google, and Carhartt.
Farley said the problem is too large and too varied for any single company or state to solve alone. «Skilled trades are the backbone of our country and American manufacturing, and the backbone of the American dream,» he said, adding that the issue is personal for him because his grandfather was a mechanic and his father grew up around cars. «No one company is going to solve this alone. It’s way too big of a problem.»
The new State of America’s Skilled Trades report finds that more than 18 million people now work in the trades, contributing an estimated $3.8 trillion to U.S. gross domestic product in 2025. But the shortage is not uniform. Data centers, manufacturing plants, grid projects, housing construction, and infrastructure investment are creating distinct labor pressures across different regions, while retirement, worker migration, training capacity, and poor completion rates create different constraints in each one.
Nearly one-quarter of skilled-trades workers are 55 or older, compared with 11% who are younger than 25. Across the formal training pathways the report can measure, the country is preparing roughly 55 workers for every 100 needed nationally. The authors caution that the figure does not count all employer-led and on-the-job routes into the workforce.
The labor challenge also varies sharply by trade. Industrial machinery mechanics, machinery maintenance workers, and millwrights rank at the 98th percentile nationally for shortage pressure among 523 occupations measured, while electricians rank at the 85th percentile and automotive technicians rank at the 54th percentile.
Geography further complicates matters. Texas and North Carolina each gain about 5,000 trades workers annually on net through interstate migration, while New York loses about 9,000 more than it gains. The largest interstate flow is from California to Texas, at about 5,000 workers annually. Matt Sigelman, president of the Burning Glass Institute, which led the report’s quantitative analysis, described fast-growing states as «essentially importing the workers that they’re failing to train.»
The report also argues the challenge is not simply getting more people into apprenticeships and technical programs. Of every 100 people who start a skilled-trades apprenticeship, a Burning Glass Institute analysis found, only 48 complete it, and 29 enter a trade occupation within five years of leaving. In related postsecondary programs, 48 out of 100 complete, while 34 ultimately work in a skilled trade. The two pathways draw from different data sources and are not directly comparable, the report says.
That creates a problem beyond recruitment, particularly as companies and states attempt to meet demand from major capital projects. Experienced workers are needed not only to fill jobs, but to mentor apprentices, supervise jobsite learning, and teach the next generation. If those workers retire or get pulled into immediate project work, the training system itself can lose capacity.
The report calls for employers, labor groups, educators, local and state governments, workforce organizations, and funders to coordinate their responses. Its recommendations include improving completion and placement outcomes; providing child care, transportation, and other supports for trainees; strengthening links from high-school career programs to apprenticeships and jobs; and planning workforce needs when large projects are announced, not after hiring becomes urgent.
Farley framed that as an argument against siloed approaches. «It takes people breaking out of their silos,» he said. «It takes large and small and medium-sized employers, educators, policymakers, local leaders, and politicians all actually working together.»
Dimon credited Detroit with showing over the past decade «what is possible when business, government and community leaders work together for the long term,» adding that Michigan LIFT will work to connect customer demand, capital, and public resources «so more companies can grow, more workers can participate and more critical capabilities can scale here in the United States.»
Farley also said there is a lot of data on what he calls «the essential economy,» but it is «scattered — and hard to compare.» The Alliance is therefore launching the America’s Skilled Trades Dashboard, a first-of-its-kind tool that brings it together in one place.
«Ford is America’s automaker,» Farley said while announcing Michigan LIFT, «and we believe American manufacturing’s best days are ahead.»
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