Now 40 years old, the Bluegrass State Skills Corporation (BSSC), operated within the Kentucky Cabinet for Economic Development, makes every year count.
A Ready Talent Base
Mike Yoder knows the BSSC program well, having overseen it at the Kentucky Cabinet for Economic Development before recently being appointed interim commissioner of the Department of Workforce Development (DWD) within the Kentucky Education and Labor Cabinet. The agencies of the DWD, the Office of Vocational Rehabilitation and the Office of Employer and Apprenticeship Services work together to provide services through the Kentucky Career Center. Also, under the direction of DWD is the Office of Adult Education.
“One of the values of BSSC is it’s the industries doing the actual training,” said. “For me, the key differentiator is it’s not a specialized training program. It’s companies investing in their employees and doing so in a way that is beneficial for their industries.”
One of the most frequent beneficiaries, Ford, is a case in point. While training employees at its Louisville facilities, it can also cross-train as Ford’s huge 5,000-job joint venture with SK — BlueOval SK or “BOSK” — continues to ramp up along I-65 to the south in Glendale.
“Then when BOSK is fully functional,” Yoder said, “their workforce is ready to go.”
BlueOval SK partnered with Elizabethtown Community and Technical College to establish a training center for the company’s 5,000 projected workers that opened in 2024.
Photo courtesy of the Office of the Governor
“Ready” also is the operative word in a more recently launched program: Ready for Industry, supported by $5 million in funding awarded to the Education and Labor Cabinet through a federal Quality Jobs, Equity, Strategy and Training (QUEST) grant. Each Ready for Industry course is 15-20 hours of instruction designed to help jobseekers understand what it’s like to work in several high-demand industries, including manufacturing, health care, information technology, transportation, distribution and logistics, and architecture and construction. Kentucky is one of only five states in the nation to provide free, statewide access to the program, which responds to something Yoder said his colleagues were hearing more and more from employers: “We can train people to do what we need them to do. But we need them to have the skills at the level that makes them trainable.”
The BOSK project, meanwhile — part of an $11 billion investment across locations in Kentucky and Tennessee that will create 11,000 jobs in all — also benefits from a unique training relationship with Elizabethtown Community and Technical College (ECTC), which in June 2024 opened the ECTC BlueOval SK Training Center to begin providing onboarding and training to BlueOval SK employees. Between July 2023 and that date, ECTC already had provided training for more than 1,000 employees that will work at the battery plant in Glendale.
“ECTC has provided the majority of BlueOval SK’s onboarding and training at our main campus,” said ECTC Chief Workforce Officer Darrin Powell. “With the training center open, we can continue to offer high-quality curriculum for these high-demand careers, right next door to BlueOval SK Battery Park.”
The state invested $25 million in the advanced battery manufacturing training center.
In addition to other training programs, ECTC also has provided customized training services under the Kentucky Community and Technical College System’s TRAINS program, which since its creation in 2014 has assisted growing companies with 1,184 projects involving more than 87,300 enrollments, including 668 projects in manufacturing that have attracted $14.5 million in TRAINS investment.
“It’s a sister program to BSSC,” Yoder explained, typically conducted at the college. “If a business has particular training needed and a college has a certification or can customize a plan, KCTCS will incentivize that. ECTC with BlueOval is an example. For BOSK we can do both BSSC and TRAIN commitments to get them off the ground.”
“The key differentiator is it’s not a specialized training program. It’s companies investing in their employees and doing so in a way that is beneficial for their industries.”
— Mike Yoder, Interim Commissioner, Kentucky Department of Workforce Development, on the value of Bluegrass State Skills Corporation
It’s recommended that BSSC grant recipients consider becoming a part of Kentucky’s registered apprenticeship program, which has its own momentum going, including such areas as early childhood education and child care, backed by Gov. Beshear’s push to fund universal Pre-K for all four-year-olds in the state. Apprenticeships for the electric vehicle industry, meanwhile, aren’t happening only in EV manufacturing plants, but throughout the entire EV supply chain. Overall numbers are breaking records: In recognizing National Apprenticeship Week in November 2024, the Kentucky Center for Statistics (KYSTATS) and the Office of Employer and Apprenticeship Services showed Kentucky logged 6,639 active apprentices during federal fiscal year 2023, a record high for a single year. “That number exceeds the previous year’s total by 15% and more than doubles the number of active apprentices recorded a decade earlier,” the state announced.
In fiscal year 2024, the BSSC board of directors approved roughly $19 million in funds and credits for 104 Kentucky facilities to train 42,600-plus workers, the most since 2016. Moreover, the board approved more than $1.7 million in training funds and credits for over 4,000 trainees across 26 Kentucky facilities during the first of four fiscal year 2025 meetings.
The board approved 76 grant-in-aid (GIA) applications for companies and training consortia to provide training for 35,213 Kentucky resident employees. Meanwhile, GIA net disbursements for skills training projects during FY24 totaled $2,435,034 for the benefit of 40 company locations and consortia organizations to provide training to 27,363 Kentucky-resident employees. Among those benefiting was longtime Kentucky employer Ford Motor Co., which received $500,000 in grant-in-aid in three installments to train 7,485 employees in Louisville. Others receiving a $75,000 grant-in-aid included Buffalo Trace Distillery in Frankfort (352 employees in Frankfort); automotive supplier Mubea (350 employees in Florence); and Toyotetsu (590 employees in Owensboro).
In Kentucky, the median starting wage for those who complete a registered apprenticeship program is
$55,366 IN THE FIRST YEAR OF EMPLOYMENT,
increasing to
$71,295 IN THE 10TH YEAR OF EMPLOYMENT.
The board also approved tax credit applications for 33 companies to provide support to train 7,363 Kentucky- resident employees through its Skills Training Investment Credit (STIC). In FY24, STIC benefits were issued for $1,315,898 to 30 companies for 2,890 trainees, including 1,124 at North American Stainless, Inc., in Ghent and 231 trainees at Carmeuse Lime & Stone, Inc., in Butler.
Last but not least, the BSSC approved its 14th Metropolitan College Tax Credit to United Parcel Service during FY24 in the amount of $3,869,527 for training provided to 1,681 students as part of the “Metropolitan College Agreement” first formed in 2009 to provide educational opportunities alongside employment via a partnership among UPS, the University of Louisville and Jefferson Community and Technical College.
Businesses involved in manufacturing, agribusiness, non-retail service or technology, headquarters operations, hospital operations, coal severing and processing, alternative fuel, gasification, renewable energy production or carbon dioxide transmission pipelines may be eligible for BSSC incentives. Training consortia may also qualify for the GIA program. The beneficiaries are among the many Kentucky employers found on the Cabinet’s 2024 list of active incentives projects, which number 1,540 across all incentive programs.
By Your Side
If it sounds like a lot of departments at work on workforce, it’s a topic Yoder and colleagues are addressing to better integrate the cabinets and how they collaborate. Sort of like the companies receiving BSSC incentives integrate training into their daily operations. A council, known as the Statewide Workforce and Talent Team (SWATT), has been created across state agencies and various industry associations to streamline efforts in addressing business needs. In support of this initiative, the Governor has committed Workforce Talent Project Managers, all in the name of responding to the needs of business.
“The big overarching theme that bleeds into the work we’re doing is the commitment by the governor to say, ‘We are here to help companies in Kentucky and help Kentuckians,’ ” said Yoder. “How does a business see their talent life cycle, and how do we bring agencies and partners into the life cycle with concierge support.”
It’s not enough to say, “Here’s a good site with electricity and roads, and here’s a workforce for that industry,” Yoder added. “We’re going to walk alongside you. We have a plan to sustain companies. We want to be a concierge and good steward. We want this to continue to be their Kentucky home.”
