Defense Department launches skilled trades push with $10 million check

The U.S. Department of Defense this month launched a new initiative called Build Freedom, aimed at bringing more Americans into the skilled trades. 

What’s happening: The department — which now also goes by the Department of War, a secondary title granted by the president last year — kicked off the initiative with a $10 million check to the mikeroweWORKS Foundation, founded by TV host Mike Rowe in 2008, to fund scholarships for students, young adults, and veterans pursuing careers in the trades.

• The Pentagon has also launched a dedicated Build Freedom website, serving as a centralized platform to connect job seekers with available HVAC, plumbing, electrical, and other trade roles across the U.S.
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The big picture: The effort adds to a growing list of skilled trades investments from both Washington and the business community this year, as Homepros has reported, including a first-of-its-kind federal workforce grant program that launched on July 1, and over $600 million pledged by Lowe’s, BlackRock, Bloomberg, Meta, and Google to train tradespeople.

What they’re saying: “Not a day goes by where [we don’t] get a call from some leader of some consequential industry in our country who is freaking out,” Rowe said in a statement. “They’ve done the math; they know that for every five tradespeople that retire, two come in. It’s been that way for nearly 12 years.”

• “[The] stigma, stereotypes, myths, and misperceptions that we deal with every day, those can be confronted, those can be changed,” he added. “This campaign is an attempt to do that.”

Representatives for Build Freedom didn’t return a request for comment.