If Alaska Businesses Need the Workforce, We Have to Help Build the Training Capacity Too

Alaska employers talk a lot about workforce shortages.

We need more operators. More technicians. More people who understand industrial systems. More workers who can step into complex environments and keep things running.

That part is familiar.

What gets less attention is what has to exist before those workers can ever show up.

Training programs need equipment. They need instructors. They need current technology. They need students who know the careers exist. And they need employers close enough to the process to make sure the training still matches the work.

That is what makes a recent $400,000 investment from ConocoPhillips Alaska worth paying attention to.

The company donated the funding to the University of Alaska to establish a Process Technology Support Fund for programs at UAF Community and Technical College and UAA’s Kenai Peninsula College. The money is intended to support updated training equipment, simulation technology, outreach, dual-credit pathways, and scholarships.

That may sound like an education story.

It is also a manufacturing story.

Process technology programs prepare people to work in environments where complex systems have to be monitored, maintained, and operated safely and consistently. Those skills apply across oil and gas, but also mining and milling, refining, chemical manufacturing, power generation, utilities, wastewater treatment, food processing, transportation, and other industrial sectors.

In other words, the same training capacity that supports one industry can strengthen several. That matters because Alaska does not have an unlimited pool of industrial workers to draw from.

When one sector grows quickly, it can pull talent away from another. A manufacturer may be competing for the same technician as a mine, utility, processing plant, or energy company. That competition does not disappear just because every employer agrees Alaska needs more skilled workers.

The real solution is to increase the number of people who can do the work.

And that requires investment before the job posting ever goes live.

The University of Alaska programs highlighted in the article already show strong outcomes. Kenai Peninsula College reports that 88 percent of process technology graduates find jobs in their field within a year, with average first-year earnings above $84,000 and average wages around $130,000 within five years.

Those numbers tell us two things.

First, these are not training programs disconnected from the labor market. Employers are hiring the graduates. Second, the bottleneck is not necessarily convincing students that industrial careers can pay well. The harder problem may be making sure the training system has enough capacity to keep producing qualified people.

That is where industry involvement matters.

Manufacturers and other industrial employers sometimes talk about workforce development as though it is a service the education system should provide on demand. Industry identifies the occupations it needs, schools train people, and graduates arrive ready to work.

Real life is messier.

Training equipment becomes outdated. Programs need simulation tools that reflect current industrial environments. Instructors with the right experience are often qualified for jobs in private industry that pay more than teaching positions. Enrollment can fluctuate. Students may not understand what a process technician actually does or how many industries those skills can open up.

The article points directly at one of those constraints: Alaska's private-sector wage environment is making faculty recruitment difficult.

That creates an uncomfortable loop.

Industry needs experienced workers.

Training programs need experienced workers to teach the next generation.

And both are competing for the same people.

You cannot solve that problem by asking schools to work harder.

It has to become a shared capacity problem.

ConocoPhillips' investment is useful because it approaches workforce from that direction. The funding is not only aimed at scholarships. It can support the equipment, simulation technology, and outreach that make the programs themselves stronger.

That is a much more durable kind of workforce investment.

A scholarship helps one student. A stronger program can help hundreds of students over time. Updated equipment helps students train on systems that are closer to what they will encounter in the field. Better outreach helps more students discover industrial careers earlier. Dual-credit pathways can bring high school students into that pipeline before they have already chosen another direction.

Those investments increase the capacity of the system itself.

That is the lesson Alaska manufacturers should take from this.

If businesses need more skilled workers, we have to be willing to help build the institutions that produce them. That does not mean every manufacturer needs to write a $400,000 check. For a smaller company, the contribution may look different.

It might mean helping a program understand which skills are becoming more important.

It might mean donating equipment that is still useful for training even if it has aged out of production.

It might mean opening a facility for student tours.

It might mean providing internships, job shadowing, or work-based learning.

It might mean helping an instructor understand how a process has changed in the field.

It might mean sending an experienced employee into a classroom for a day.

It might mean working with other employers to support a shared training need that no single company can solve on its own.

The point is not that industry should take over education.

The point is that workforce development works better when the people hiring graduates are part of the system that prepares them.

That is especially important in Alaska because our industrial workforce needs are spread across sectors that overlap more than they first appear.

A process technician trained to understand instrumentation, safety, flow systems, controls, troubleshooting, and industrial operations may find opportunities in energy today and food processing later. The underlying capability travels.

That makes broad industrial training especially valuable in a small labor market.

It also means companies should be careful about thinking too narrowly about "their" workforce pipeline.

If a mining company supports a strong process technology program, manufacturers can benefit. If an energy company helps improve simulation equipment, utilities can benefit.

If manufacturers help students understand automation and production systems, other industrial employers can benefit too. The workforce ecosystem is shared whether businesses plan for it that way or not.

That is where AKMA has a role.

Our members can help identify where training gaps are showing up before they become larger problems. We can help connect employers with education programs. We can help surface the skills companies are actually struggling to hire for and distinguish temporary shortages from deeper structural ones.

We can also help make industrial careers more visible.

A lot of students understand what it means to become a nurse, teacher, firefighter, or engineer because those career paths are familiar. Industrial work can be harder to picture from the outside.

What does a process technician do?

What does an industrial maintenance career look like?

What kinds of jobs exist inside a food processing plant, fabrication shop, mine, utility, or manufacturing facility?

If students do not know those careers exist, they cannot choose them.

That visibility is part of workforce development too.

The ConocoPhillips investment is a good reminder that the workforce conversation should not begin with the open position. By the time a company cannot fill a role, the shortage is already here.

The more useful question is what we are doing three, five, or ten years earlier to make sure the training capacity exists.

That is a longer horizon than most hiring conversations, but it is how industries build durable labor markets. Alaska's employers know what happens when a critical piece of infrastructure is undersized.

Production slows.

Costs rise.

Growth gets harder.

Workforce training is infrastructure too.

If we expect more manufacturing, more processing, more energy development, more mining, and more industrial activity, then the systems that prepare people for those jobs have to grow with them.

That requires more than asking schools to produce more graduates.

It requires employers helping strengthen the capacity behind the graduates.

Where This Moves From Conversation to Action

AKMA wants to know which roles are hardest to fill? Which skills are missing most often? Are employers struggling because not enough people are entering the field, because training capacity is limited, because instructors are hard to recruit, or because the curriculum has not kept pace with the work?

Those answers can help us move from a general "workforce shortage" conversation to something much more useful.

If Alaska businesses need the workforce, we have to help build the training capacity too.

Join AKMA and help shape the workforce conversations that matter to Alaska manufacturers:https://www.akmfg.org/join

Source

Alaska Business Magazine, “Tech Talent,” 2026.https://www.akbizmag.com/industry/education/techtalent/