Summer 2025 saw Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport celebrate the graduation of the first cohort from its Welding Apprenticeship program. The 4,000-plus work hours and 288 classroom hours those apprentices logged over one year would sound familiar to many of the passengers who came through that very airport a few weeks prior to that graduation to attend the 2025 SkillsUSA National Leadership and Skills Conference in Atlanta.
The annual event drew around 18,000 attendees and more than 6,800 entrants in 114 technical skills competitions across such specialties as welding, drone piloting, 5-axis machining, masonry, barbering, heavy equipment operation (at the Komatsu North America facility in Cartersville), automotive body repair, carpentry, robotics, baking and automated manufacturing.
The event is estimated to have a $28 million economic impact on metro Atlanta. The economic impact of SkillsUSA programs and students on employers’ bottom lines is immeasurable.
More than 443,000 career and technical education (CTE) students and teachers join SkillsUSA annually. And more than 850 national (and international) companies support the organization as business and industry partners.
Site Selection summer intern Evan Secor of Marist School and I walked the entire competition floor at Georgia World Congress Center Authority. One of the first people we met was a welder: Kaitlyn Cheek, a student at East Davidson High School in Thomasville, North Carolina. A metal sculptor, she told us she had just earned her welding certificate through dual enrollment at Davidson-Davie Community College. She said companies coming to the Lexington area are looking for welders. In the barbering competition area we met a competitor from Oklahoma who also has a welding certification.
In an exhibition area that resembled a real-world science fair, we talked to three students from Burrillville High School in Rhode Island who were returning to the national competition after having placed third the year before.
Sean Zanella, Benjamin Pina and Wyatt Wayland have developed an early warning system for sump pumps that uses an array of sensors to monitor dielectric current, a microcontroller (an upgrade from VEX Robotics parts and open wires) and an app to warn of overflow. Experts from area companies have lent expertise and guidance as well as endorsements. “Senior Claims Manager Stephen Helper from Amica Insurance said with our products they offer a premium reduction on home mortgage insurance,” Sean Zanella told us.
A mere few days before the Atlanta conference, the team’s revamped and upgraded system had received a provisional U.S. patent, a fact that no doubt contributed to their earning of a high school division career pathways industrial engineering and technology national gold medal one day after our conversation.
That was one of 409 gold medals handed out at the conference’s culminating event in State Farm Arena. How did the states measure up after all 1,181 medals were awarded? With the cooperation of SkillsUSA, we were able to get our hands on the numbers, including a separate set of statistics that should be meaningful to companies scouting CTE-oriented communities and training partners: the medal counts for individual secondary and post-secondary institutions.
First, the states. Here are the top 10 and ties by total medal count:
As for institutions, a New Jersey school tops them all. Here are the top 20 and ties by total medal count:
Yes, you read that right: Somerset County Academy for Health & Medical Sciences earned 17 gold medals — a gold medal tally better than all but seven entire states. The accomplishment further burnishes the county’s life sciences reputation. The second-place school, John A. Dubiski Career High School, describes itself as a public school of choice in the Grand Prairie ISD in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area. There are 14 programs of study from health sciences to automotive to cosmetology, all aligned with U.S. Department of Labor Career Clusters.
One day after speaking with Site Selection on the exhibition floor in Atlanta, Sean Zanella, Benjamin Pina and Wyatt Wayland of Burrillville High School in northwestern Rhode Island earned a gold medal at the SkillsUSA National Leadership and Skills Conference.
Third-place Catawba Valley Community College in Hickory, North Carolina, has more than 50 programs of study and more than 18 articulation agreements with universities for credit transfers. A total of 19 CVCC students were among 537 competitors representing North Carolina, with the CVCC SkillsUSA chapter honored as a “Gold Chapter of Distinction” for the ninth consecutive year.
By number of institutions earning medals, here are the top 10 states and ties:
Looking to sophisticated talent metrics to evaluate locations for investment? It may pay to add these straightforward state and institutional tallies to the map and the matrix. And it may be worthwhile to further study how specific programs at these leading institutions match up with your company’s workforce development goals.
Evan Secor contributed to this report, a version of which was published as a Site Selection Snapshot at siteselection.com.
