It’s important to recognize Latino workers in the U.S. and their impact on the economy and to increase access to educational opportunity, says Mauricio Garcia, senior vice president of programs for UnidosUS, the nonprofit, nonpartisan Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization.
Garcia sat down with WorkingNation’s editor-in-chief Ramona Schindelheim for an interview for WorkingNation Overheard at JFF Horizons in Washington, D.C.
He notes, “In this decade alone, we will account for nearly 80% of new workers.” But, according to the National Skills Coalition, 57% of Latinos in the U.S. have limited or no digital skills.
With 92% of all jobs in the country requiring at least some digital skills, Garcia says there needs to greater access for Latinos to appropriate training and “investments in digital skilling. We’ve seen the federal government play a role in it. There’s more that the federal government can do.”
He adds that it an area in which employers, particularly big employers, can have more impact “whether it’s through Registered Apprenticeship programs that have the skilling component or other pre-apprenticeship programs – the collaboration, the sectoral partnerships, to be able to actually build that into the programming of a local community-based organization that may not have a registered apprenticeship program.”
Looking more broadly, Garcia says, “It’s also about how do we bring this up, raise the importance of digital skilling using not just people in the know – because we’re all in the workforce world – but how do we talk about it in terms of other entities?”
He emphasizes the importance of digital literacy in all aspects of our lives. “We’re talking about how does someone actually navigate buying a home? You’re going to need digital skilling because everything is online. And so, it’s all interconnected. We’re going to need more partners investing more dollars, investing more training to be able to embed that properly within programmatic efforts.”
Learn more about UnidosUS.
WorkingNation Overheard at JFF Horizons 2024 was made possible through funding from EnGen.
© Copyright 2024 by Structural Unemployment, LLC dba WorkingNation
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