Meta's electrician training is free. The job that comes with it has a catch

Meta's newest recruits could lose their jobs once data center construction is finished. Nobody knows if they'll get hired anywhere else

Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch via Getty Images

Meta $META has found a shortcut around the years it normally takes to license an electrician. Through the company's America's Workforce Academy, which it announced in June, Meta flies recruits to Louisiana, houses them, and trains them for five weeks. At the end of this crash course is the promise of a job. But it ends the day construction wraps on the site these recruits were hired for.

The $115 million program is even open to those who haven't worked in construction before. Graduates leave with two credentials — a National Center for Construction Education and Research certification known as NCCER and an America's Workforce Certificate — plus a standing job offer from one of Meta's contractors.

Rachel Peterson, Meta's vice president of data centers, describes the academy as proof of "the same ambition and long-term thinking we bring to the technology itself." Michael Bellaman, head of Associated Builders and Contractors, calls it "an innovative talent pipeline solution." Neither one seems to know whether any of Meta's graduates will find work once the job is complete.

The shortcut around traditional apprenticeship training

Employers already pay apprentices to learn the electrical trade.........

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