Gwinnett Technical College is getting attention as one of the most successful trade schools in the country, and Trump administration officials are wondering if its programs can be replicated nationwide.

On Monday, Department of Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer and Small Business Administrator Kelly Loeffler visited the university on to see why some programs have a two-year waitlist to get into.

Filling the manufacturing gap

The national unemployment rate is the highest it has been since 2021, but here in Georgia, the numbers tell a different story.

According to the Georgia Department of Labor, the state's unemployment rate has remained steady for the last two months and is nearly a full point lower at 3.4%.

Those unemployment numbers come with a gap across the country—600,000 open manufacturing jobs, and employers are looking to fill those positions quickly. That's where Gwinnett Technical College comes in.

The school has training for automotive technology, cybersecurity, and even gaming, and their popularity has students waiting for years to learn.

At the automotive technician school, program director Robert Bauman brings a touch of his military background to his classes, giving students drills to gear up for a stable future.

"Since 1992, I have never collected a day of unemployment. I wouldn't even know how to file for it. Why? Because my skills in this industry have always been in demand. And so I've had a really successful career," Bauman said.

Now he's passing those skills onto the next generation at a time that's never been more critical.

"It's actually reaching almost a crisis point," he said. "In the next five years, almost 52% of the automotive technicians in the industry are going to retire. And it's true because they're all kind of run my age. That's going to leave a huge void that needs to be filled. We can't fill these jobs fast enough."

The college is leading the way in changing that. The program is about to undergo a multi-million-dollar expansion to bring more students through the door.

A model trade school

The college also visits middle and high schools, making sure students know that after two years of training, they can graduate earning six figures.

That's what drove Ajay Miles to apply.

"I do well in school, but I don't like school either. That's why it played into a big factor to do the two-year thing," Miles said.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York found that recent college graduates are unemployed at a higher rate than the national average, and that's why Leoffler and Chavez-DeRemer visited on Monday.

"You're going to be that next generation of workers that'll inspire others that come behind you," Leoffler told the students.

They're learning what makes successful programs work, and funding programs is more than a policy point. It can change a student's future. Gwinnett Technical College partners with local companies to make sure its students have internships and jobs lined up while they're in school. That partnership is another piece of the success story officials hope to replicate at trade schools across the country.

"Watching them come in on day one and literally not knowing how to put a car up on a lift, and then graduating and having a job at a dealership, there's no better reward in the world," Bauman said.

With more investment from the federal government, the technical college could play a crucial role in filling these jobs for years to come in Georgia. 

"You see this rush towards electrification, this rush towards self-driving cars, this rush towards hybridization, and all of these cool things that cars do, this industry … to anybody listening, all of that provides my two favorite words in life: job security," he said.