Detroit, Michigan Roundtable on the Future of Mobility Workforce

Michigan already has successful workforce development organizations and programs in place. However, the current economic transition—where mobility technology is changing more rapidly than in the state’s history—presents different labor market challenges. The state needs innovative solutions, pilot programs, and collaboration to successfully achieve its workforce development goals. Many advanced education programs exist in Michigan, like higher education degrees in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). However, the industry must work with educational institutions to ensure the advanced skills developed in Michigan stay in the state and are applied to the mobility industry. As companies make long-term strategic investment decisions, Michigan has a limited window to demonstrate to employers that the state’s leadership on climate is aligned with its economic growth opportunities, rather than allowing the framing that climate policy is a harmful regulatory burden.

Workforce training providers need to design workforce transformation solutions that allow people to train while they are working. Employers need to be able to upskill and reskill workers without removing them from their jobs. Actors across the state need to foster collaboration and create partnerships between industry, economic development organizations, community partners, training organizations, and PK-20+ educational institutions to align around shared objectives and position communities to take advantage of statewide and federal resources. There need to be standards in place for training certifications to provide a definitive, industry-wide understanding of what skills each certificate represents and how to apply them.

Workers historically valued the automotive industry over other industries due to its pay premium, but the industry is losing workers to other sectors like retail, warehousing, and others that offer better pay and benefits but may not have long-term career growth opportunities. Michigan needs to create and communicate the opportunity of entering an industry with a long-term career pathway like mobility. Uncertainty about the direction and speed of advancements in mobility technology complicates planning decisions for companies looking to invest in their workforce development. Communities need technical support and additional capacity to effectively plan for the coming investments in clean energy and advanced manufacturing projects.

• The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Center for Transportation Workforce Development should create a national EV workforce “moonshot” with clear roles for each level of government. This should include less restricted federal investment and technical support, state convening and supporting programs, and locally-driven implementation. As an intermediate step, the federal government should invest in capacity building for states to support local governments applying for federal funding related to workforce development programs.
• Michigan should support communities’ ability to apply for federal EV workforce-related funding, similar to the EPA’s Technical Assistance Hubs. Technical Assistance Hubs help provide capacity for frontline communities to navigate and have access to all of the resources provided by the IRA. Following this model, Michigan should also have a program that provides technical assistance to communities looking to access federal funding opportunities and grant resources for supporting workforce development programs.
• The State should build on the existing Career Quest by broadening it to include PK-12, rather than its current focus on high school, and including a range of new, relevant occupations. West Michigan Works! created MI Career Quest to introduce students to opportunities in high-demand industries and address employer’s need for future talent in construction, health care, information technology, and manufacturing. Companies are involved, but the program currently focuses on potential occupations rather than including the broad vision of available career pathways and partnerships with specific companies that can offer employment.
• The state should create a shared center for EV and battery education. Like an academic center, this center should be hosted by a university but accessible to all for EV and battery education. This center should help lead the development of a standardized workforce compact/ continuum. Standardized, replicable, and validated templates for programs would be extremely valuable in coordinating training programs across the state to ensure that the skills being developed are comparable and match employer needs.
• The state should significantly increase funding for the Michigan Works! system, and more broadly for the public investment systems, to improve data sharing among employers, training programs, and educational institutions to help improve the training of incumbent workers.

• The state should create an anchor organization that coordinates and is supported by employers to create an inclusive future mobility workforce. This organization should serve as a neutral convenor to bring all stakeholders together, create a forum for sharing and understanding all stakeholders’ unique needs, and create an organized path forward for the EV workforce. It should engage companies throughout the supply chain, education providers, workforce development agencies, economic development organizations, labor, and state government.
• The state should lead a marketing campaign for jobs and careers in the future mobility industry to make these careers attractive to prospective workers. This marketing campaign should target Michiganders broadly, with specific focus on secondary educators including guidance counselors, career advisors in vocational/tech schools, and teachers—particularly of STEAM classes. Outreach and marketing materials should demonstrate the possibilities of a career in the future mobility industry, and highlight the kinds of skills that are needed to thrive. Participants envisioned the campaign being modeled on the highly successful “got milk” campaign, which encouraged students to drink more milk by leaning on positive role models for students and targeting marketing pathways with the greatest accessibility to students.52

• The state should invest in placemaking to build a community of support for a person’s full day, including wraparound services like housing, public transit or alternative modes of transportation, and childcare. Building on the baseline data in the 2023 Growing Michigan Together Council Report, state agencies should identify neighborhoods with lower labor force participation and their barriers to working.66 Once these are identified, the state should create and fund employment hubs to provide the necessary support to pursue employment opportunities.
• The state should provide funding and technical assistance to communities, whether municipal governments or local economic or workforce development organizations, to identify barriers to entry to the workforce, make a plan to address these barriers, and seek resources for these solutions.
• The city of Detroit, with funding and policy support from the state, should invest in its transportation infrastructure to attract and retain residents. In addition to investing in public transportation infrastructure to better connect the city, and to connect neighborhoods where people live and work, the city should invest in electric mobility solutions like public EV charging infrastructure. City government should work collaboratively with the automotive industry to highlight future mobility industry opportunities in the city and attract investment.