However, many people lack the skills and qualifications needed to fill those positions, those officials said.
The grants will pay for more than 1,000 county residents to receive workforce development and employment services to prepare them for jobs in some growing industries, including manufacturing, logistics and transportation.
“These dollars are going to help us get Montgomery County residents into jobs and into better jobs,” said Commission President Debbie Lieberman.
The U.S. Department of Labor this year made about $150 million available through its Sector Partnership National Emergency Grant program.
In June, the labor department announced it awarded $7 million to Ohio to support job-training programs and regional and industry-focused partnerships.
Montgomery County will receive about $2.4 million of those dollars, the largest distribution in the state.
Montgomery County planned to spend about $11 million on workforce development in the next two years, officials said.
The large infusion of state and federal dollars will greatly enhance the county’s ability to prepare workers for the jobs that are on the way, said Michael Colbert, the assistant Montgomery County administrator for development services.
Some major employers in the region, including Fuyao, Payless Shoesource and Proctor & Gamble, will hire several thousand workers in the next year and a half, Colbert said.
The grant money will pay for local residents to receive training in manufacturing or logistics from institutions including Sinclair Community College and Miami Valley Career Technology Center, Colbert said.
The grants will pay for residents to attend classes to acquire commercial driver’s licenses. The county will offer local employers on-the-job training grants for up to $8,000 for a six-month period, Colbert said.
“It’s a subsidized wage for the training period,” Colbert said. “An employer picks their own person, they train them and we subsidize the wage.”
The county also has accepted $400,000 in grant funding from the Ohio Department of Job & Family Services and the Area 7 Workforce Investment Board.
The money will aid Fuyao Glass Inc. with hiring dislocated workers.
Fuyao has hired about 350 of the 1,550 workers it plans to employ at its Moraine facility, county officials said.
The state funds will assist the company with on-the-job training, business services and hiring events, officials said.
“We’ve seen this partnership (with local governments and the state) produce extraordinary results as we’ve been through the process of our initial hiring … and begin the training process in preparations for our production launch, which is scheduled for later this month and into next month,” said John Gauthier, president of Fuyao Glass America Inc., at a Tuesday press conference.
Lieberman said the county was awarded the grants because it has a strategic plan for economic growth that focuses on core sectors, including manufacturing, logistics and transportation.
She said the funds will better align job-training programming with meeting the needs of the local and regional job market.
“We have been working on this, but there’s going to be so much more that we’ll be able to do,” Lieberman said.
Lieberman said this is the most significant injection of federal funds the county has received for workforce development since the stimulus package of 2009.
The $2.4 million federal grant must be spent by June of 2017.
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