Many of the students who come into Tatia Shelton's office at Metropolitan Community College often walk in making minimum wage. She helps run the career services department at the Business and Technology campus.
"They are maybe doing fast food or retail and are finding that those are dead end careers and they don't have the opportunity to earn the wages that they might need for growing families," she said.
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But when they leave after one to four semesters of study, it's a different story.
"We often hear about white collar, we hear about blue collar workers," Shelton explained. "One of the things we stress here is what we call our gold collar jobs. Those are jobs that will see a greater than average growth rate. Coming out of those programs, people have an ability to make anywhere from $40,000 to $100,000 a year."
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Yes, machines do take away jobs, like manufacturing, but they also create jobs for skilled workers like those who graduate the HVAC, welding and industrial mechanical training programs at MCC.
"Automation just raises the bar on the level of skill it takes to be in the workforce. Even a machine operator is a lot more technical than it was 10 or 15 years ago," said Joe Roche, the dean of instruction at the school.
One reason the pay is better is because the skill level is higher than say working in fast food or retail. The other is that there are more jobs than people to work in them.
That is why this community college is working to reach those in low skill fields, not only so they can make a livable wage, but also so they can have work when - not if - robots replace minimum wage jobs.
MCC is hosting a gold collar job fair:
WHEN: Dec. 8
TIME: 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.
WHERE: 1775 Universal Ave, Kansas City, Mo.
RSVP: 816.604.5534 or online at goldcollarjobs.com
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Terra Hall can be reached at terra.hall@kshb.com.
