Industrial Base and Workforce Development for Skilled Trades

This press release from Representative Ed Case (D-HI) was published on 2026-09-04 and titled "Industrial Base and Workforce Development for Skilled Trades".

Industrial Base and Workforce Development for Skilled Trades

Thank you to Chair Calvert and our witnesses for this opportunity for us all to address critical industrial base workforce challenges that are in turn critical to the defense industrial base that is required for our national defense over the next generation. I also express greetings and appreciation from my Ranking Member, Ms. McCollum, for whom I’m filling in today. We all know that our defense industrial base has eroded significantly over the past generation-plus, adversely affecting our advanced manufacturing and repair and maintenance capacity across several integral areas including supply chains, access to critical minerals and especially our trade workforce. What we are focused on here is not how we got here but where we must go over the next decades. Our specific focus in this hearing is on our industrial workforce and how to develop and implement thoughtful, sustainable solutions to recruit, train and retain skilled workers not just now but over the next generation. In doing so, we must realistically assess our challenges, including a shortage of welders, electricians, pipefitters and other skilled trades, 76 million baby boomers retiring, a too-prevalent bias against careers in the trades, and difficulty recruiting international talent from our allies and partners over the last two years. We must also factor in changes in industrial production over that same generation that will significantly alter our projections and assumptions as to workforce needs such as AI and robotics, and maximize leverage of expertise and funding across government and the private sector. Mr. Secretary, we appreciation this administration’s building on previous administrations’ efforts to develop our nation’s defense industrial base workforce. And on this Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, we are especially interested in specific programs, funding and other efforts inside and through the Department of Defense that will amplify your efforts. As part of that, we need a better understanding of the current administration’s strategy for workforce development and the “Build Freedom Campaign.” · What is the ultimate goal? · What metrics will you utilize to track our progress? · And what it will cost? I understand that the FY 2027 Industrial Base and Analysis Sustainment (IBAS) request for workforce programs is about $160 million in discretionary funding and close to $2.3 billion in mandatory funding. It would help to understand how, if provided, these funds will help the administration meet its goals, and over what time period. How would your efforts be impacted if the proposed $350 billion reconciliation package is not enacted? Are there existing programs that meet our needs, and are they properly identified and funded? What are the known gaps in our current approach, and what unexpected challenges have we faced along the way? Finally, we need to better understand how this program ties into other programs within the Department of Defense or across other departments and agencies. For example, many current Department of Labor programs serve to enhance community colleges and other workforce training programs; how are you working with them to avoid overlap? We also cannot solve this problem through spending alone. I would like to understand how we can help find, develop and meet our workforce needs by working directly with primary schools. Regarding the administration’s proposal to “deploy a national K-12 curriculum aligned with DIB skills,” we need to understand: · Which groups and business partnerships will inform this curriculum? · Will it be an accredited program? · How many educational institutions are you hoping to reach with this effort? · What will it cost? It would also be helpful to hear from our witnesses how they plan to retain trained workers, since training and recruitment is only half the challenge. I also would like to consider the BuildFreedom.US website’s representation that these defense industrial jobs are “AI proof. Six figure jobs,” because hands-on trades are harder to automate. This characterization overlooks the major leaps forward in robotics, which are made possible by AI and machine learning. As we encourage our young people to train for trade jobs, we must consider how robotics can augment, but not replace, our skilled shipbuilding workforce. Ultimately all these challenges will require multi-generation investment, so we need to continue this work in earnest. I offer Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard and other efforts in my home state of Hawai‘i as examples of how the defense industrial workforce of today and tomorrow can be trained, recruited and retained. The shipyard’s success in these areas, with close to 7,000 high-quality industrial jobs maintaining and repairing some of the most complicated and sophisticated equipment in our military has been sustained by its investment in the workforce. The shipyard’s apprentice program, which reaches initially down into the middle schools, draws thousands of applican