RINCON, Georgia — Small Business Administration Administrator Kelly Loeffler toured a career education center on Friday and said the country is making strides in training the next generation of skilled workers.
Loeffler praised the skills being taught during a visit with students and faculty at the Effingham College and Career Academy, a specialty high school in Georgia that prepares students for the workforce or college. The Trump administration is working to invest in manufacturing and other industrial jobs.
“Access to capital is certainly critical for manufacturers,” Loeffler said on Friday. “But access to a skilled workforce is absolutely one of the biggest constraints that our incredible entrepreneurs, our manufacturers, supply chain, everything is faced with today, and I can see right here at Effingham College and Career, we are seeing the workforce of the future.”
In the first 100 days of President Donald Trump’s second term, the SBA has committed to increasing domestic manufacturing over the next four years, prompting Loeffler to meet with 250 manufacturers to learn about their needs.
Loeffler, a former U.S. senator from Georgia, visited the school alongside Gov. Brian Kemp (R-GA); Kemp’s wife, first lady Marty Kemp; Republican Georgia House Speaker Jon Burns; and other state officials.
Students and school officials led the group on a tour of classrooms and an overview of the academic programs. These programs prepare high school-age students for careers in automotive, engineering, art, healthcare, computer science, culinary, and other fields. The facility partners with local employers, such as Hyundai Motors and Gulfstream Aerospace Corporation, which is the largest employer in nearby Savannah.
“It makes you feel good about the money that we’re spending to help buy equipment, to see the private sector buy in, to see how the community’s buying into that,” said Kemp. “We’ve got folks that are going to [the University of Georgia] with biomedical engineering, and we’ve got people that are going to be automotive technicians or folks that are learning skills where they can be hired directly, from automobile shops or go work before the Savannah or the port of Brunswick. And that’s what we need in our state. We need an above-all approach, and that’s what, really, what I saw here today, which is so impressive.”
Effingham County, which includes Rincon, had a total population of 73,000 residents last year and an average per capita income of $37,841.
Graduates either leave certified to work in their field of study or are better prepared to attend a four-year university.
“This is a model institution to have work-based learning happening, where you can literally walk through the halls and see hands-on career-based learning. This is so critical,” Loeffler said. “Sometimes it takes a great certification to work in automotive or agriculture. Sometimes it takes a PhD. But this is a great example of offering all of the above.”
The tour followed the release of a positive jobs report from the Trump administration earlier Friday, which included 177,000 new jobs added nationwide. Earlier in the week, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reported the economy shrank by 0.3% in the first quarter of the year, partly due to the White House’s tariff policies.
Loeffler’s visit came one day after she announced that the SBA was doubling the size of its manufacturing loans to $10 million.
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Burns praised leadership in Washington for implementing policies that prioritized economic growth.
“It’s a challenging workforce. We have great leadership on the national level,” he said. “President Trump is doing it the right way. He’s moving America forward.”
