FARGO — The Fargo Moorhead West Fargo Chamber of Commerce recently adopted a week-long pause on accepting new participants in its Good Jobs Challenge initiative, which provides job training aimed at building the area’s workforce numbers.
The Chamber said in a recent newsletter the pause was prompted by a lack of clarity at the federal level related to executive orders issued by President Donald Trump and did not affect individuals who were currently in training, or who had been approved for training.
The pause in accepting new program participants began on Friday, Jan. 31, and on Friday, Feb. 7, the Chamber said it was again accepting people into the program after receiving additional information from federal officials.
The Good Jobs Challenge initiative is tied to a three-year, $9.6 million grant from the Economic Development Administration that aims to build the region’s workforce in three areas — agriculture; cyber security/information technology; and advanced manufacturing.
That’s according to Jane Vangsness Frisch, the Chamber’s vice president of workforce.
Contributed / The Fargo Moorhead West Fargo Chamber of Commerce.
Vangsness Frisch said the goal of the initiative is to work with training education partners across all of North Dakota and much of northern Minnesota to get people into the workforce or to upscale the type of work they do.
She said the majority of participants are in the Fargo, Moorhead and West Fargo area, though a number of individuals are doing training in outstate North Dakota and Minnesota.
The initiative is to wind up in the fall of 2025, though Vangsness Frisch said there may be a possibility for a one-year extension.
She said the program’s goal is to have 900 participants trained or employed.
So far, about 320 people have been enrolled in or have completed training as part of the initiative, with about 76 people having found jobs.
“We’ve seen some pretty amazing outcomes,” Vangsness Frisch said, noting that in the case of participants who completed training and were hired in advanced manufacturing jobs, the median salary for those jobs is $52,998.
