Virginia’s New Blue Collar Boom Town
by James A. Bacon
The Hampton Roads region will need 40,000 skilled workers over the next six years to support growth of the maritime and offshore wind industries, says Hampton Roads Workforce Council President and CEO Shawn Avery. Most of those jobs will require blue-collar skills now in short supply.
Newport News Shipbuilding will need workers to build two Virginia-class submarines annually and make modular components for Columbia-class submarines, reports Virginia Business magazine. That doesn’t include thousands more needed to build the USS John F. Kennedy and USS Enterprise aircraft carriers or workers needed for the region’s naval shipyards that do repair and maintenance for the fleet.
Then there’s the offshore wind industry. The wind-turbine building boom for Dominion Energy’s Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project will support an estimated 900 jobs, and when construction subsides, the wind far will continue to support 1,100 direct and indirect jobs. Plus, there are signs that the regional effort to make Hampton Roads a major East Coast center of the wind-farm supply chain, including manufacturing, is paying off with more corporate investment and more jobs.
It’s not clear from the article if the 40,000 figure represents total maritime/wind jobs or net new jobs. Either way, it looks like a significant gain for an economically moribund region that has been a drag on Virginia’s economic performance for many years.
Don’t expect to see a lot of “creative class” jobs created by the maritime boom. For the most part, the jobs are blue-collar occupations like welding and pipefitting, although some more advanced skills such as computer-numerical controls are needed for tech-intensive manufacturing.
The Regional Workforce Training System has partnered with 30 schools, colleges, community colleges and training programs to equip future maritime workers with the skills they need. The concern is that demand will be so strong that the partnerships won’t be able to turn out enough workers with the needed skills.
That’s a nice problem to have.
