Retooling the Workforce
By Michelle Pilecki

Identify which industry slot the Kurt J. Lesker Company fits into by following the clues: high ceilings above its white-walled and dust-free 33,000-square-foot work floor, classic rock competing with country songs to mask the hum of machines, and rows of computers—most the size of small trailers—operated by some 50 intense but casually clad workers from their 20s on up.

OK. Which industry slot is it?

Manufacturing. Surprised?
This high-tech hot-spot is one facet of western Pennsylvania’s best-paying sector and the second largest employment sector in the region. Those young faces present yet another. Since 1997, more than 550 Pittsburghers—displaced older workers as well as adrift twenty-somethings—have been trained and placed with dozens of local companies just as eager for smart, skilled employees as the trainees are for high-paying jobs promising bright futures. But they’re not the only winners: the $7.1 billion–payroll manufacturing sector strengthens the regional economy by retainingmore of its best workers and companies.

Executing this algorithm is New Century Careers, a public–private consortium funded by The Heinz Endowments, other regional foundations and the public sector. Like an elegant mathematical proof, the formula looks easy, even obvious once explained, but it has taken a lot of creative work to add the numbers, subtract the stereotypes, multiply the possibilities and divide the benefits.

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