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NC apprenticeship programs get $4 million boost from U.S. Department of Labor

The T.H. Davis Aviation Center at Guilford Technical Community College. The local aviation sector has been a big driver of the college's apprenticeship program. Photo courtesy of GTCC.

The U.S. Department of Labor is providing $4 million to North Carolina's community college system. 

The federal funding for North Carolina is part of a $121 million package to expand and modernize apprenticeship programs across the country. 

There are almost 300 people enrolled in the apprenticeship program at Guilford Technical Community College, says Beth Pitonzo, the senior vice president for instruction. She says they are helping fill the job needs for area businesses, and she's hoping more companies will take part.

"There's been talk for at least five or six years, both at the federal level and the state level, that, if we don't do something, pretty soon we're gonna lose our competitive edge with all these companies being able to produce and manufacture and do all the things that they do," she says.

The five-year apprenticeship program allows students to work while earning certification in their field. Pitonzo says jobs vary but manufacturing has been a big driver of the program. 

Durable goods manufacturers are among the hardest hit by the national labor shortage in terms of the number of unfilled job openings, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Paul Garber is a Winston-Salem native and an award-winning reporter who began his journalism career with an internship at The High Point Enterprise in 1993. He has previously worked at The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The News and Record of Greensboro and the Winston-Salem Journal, where he was the newspaper's first full-time multimedia reporter. He won the statewide Media and the Law award in 2000 and has also been recognized for his business, investigative and multimedia reporting. Paul earned a BA from Wake Forest University and has a Master's of Liberal Arts degree from Johns Hopkins University and a Master's of Journalism and Mass Communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He lives in Lewisville.

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